Je Ne Regrette Rien
by the Zoshi
Summary: Existence, so, what is it? Is it just being, or is it being someone? I mean, I've never been a big thinker, it's just too much trouble, but I guess I'm going to find out about it anyways. I guess everyone has to find themself eventually... - 11 20 2010 -
1. A Cosmic Sort of Thing

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

_Oh non, rien de rien,_

_Oh non, Je ne regrette rien…_

_-Oh no, nothing at all,_

_Oh no, I don't regret anything…-_

~Various artists

First off, I'm dedicating this to Shannello (whether you like it or not, hahaha!) because otherwise this wouldn't have been posted today, but… some other time, later. xD

Well, here starts a new story in the KH universe. Best part? This one actually happens in the KH universe.

As always, I'm trying out new things and new perspectives, and new ideas. I hope I get the voice right, and that you'll all enjoy this excursion.

Also, as always, I have an idea about what's going to go on, but these things tend to get a life of themselves. In other words, I have a vague idea and I'm going to run amuck with it, as usual.

Please, sit back and enjoy!

**Reviews** are always happily received! Cookies and cake for all who review! Yay!

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Title: Je Ne Regrette Rien

Author: theZoshi

Rating: PG13

Category:

Genre: Drama/Life/Adventure

May contain: A little bit of everything

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_A Cosmic Sort of Thing_

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There's an ocean, a big one, right where you'd think there shouldn't be an ocean at all. Its huge and large and if you started off from one end you could spend your whole lifetime swimming or boating or whatever and you'd never reach the other end. Hell, you could spend twenty lifetimes, thirty, and it still wouldn't be enough. It's got one end set solidly in the light and the other in the dark. This ocean, it's so huge even space is small compared to it. Or, well, I guess it's kind of like space itself, in a way. It's got stars in it, but there are stars that hang above it too, so I don't really know how that all works out. All across it, though, you can find islands. Some of them are closer together and some of them are farther apart and some of them are so little you can barely find them, and none of them are actually islands at all. They're all worlds, different worlds all connected by this gigantic ocean. If you wanted to you could just set sail and go from world to world on this ocean.

You know how I know this? Well, it's like, I'm part of it. The ocean. I don't know how or why, but that's how it is. You know, I'm not even supposed to be here. I mean, once like way back in the beginning when I first started in with the Organization, I managed to catch Zexion one of the times he surfaced and asked him about a few things, like why we were called "Nobodies" and where our hearts had gone, and most importantly, what happened when we died. Or, er, got erased. Got vanished? I don't know, but anyway, he said we just disappeared. Poof, and that's that. Our existence, our memories, our lives, gone.

Well, I don't know, but I'm starting to think Zexi didn't really know everything, even though he acted like he did. I thought that huge book of his held a lot of answers, but maybe some of those answers were just ones he made up to make himself sound smarter. Or feel better about not knowing. Or both. Either way, whatever he said, here I am, floating around in the great big ocean of space. I'm still having a hard time believing that it's really water out here, but it has to be if I'm part of it.

I can feel the waves on the surface, if I move close to it. I can feel the ripples and the wind that causes them. I guess it's a cosmic wind, right? If I focus hard enough, I can just manage to feel the starlight too. I can't see it; I'm not _me_, after all, just… well, I don't know what I am. Floating jelly? A patch of water with a consciousness? I guess, my body is gone, but my soul isn't? Because, that's what a Nobody is, body and soul without a heart, right? Man, I can't remember things right. I don't know if it's just me being me, or if it's this whole bodilessness thing I got going on that's doing it.

Hey, I tried getting a form, or making a form, whatever, but it just didn't work out. Total bummer, but I guess Xemnas and Saix and Xigbar and everyone was right, you know? Maybe I should've spent a little more time learning how to work with this whole water-element thing and less time hiding out and jamming on the sitar. What a waste. Stuck as a blob of consciousness in a gigantic sea of space all because I didn't do the extra credit. It's official; unlife sucks just as much as regular life.

I tried to do a few things, but I can't really do anything at all. It's not like I can just whip out my sitar and start playing and make the water do stuff with my music like I used to, and I'm kind of lost now. I've been hanging around like this for… wow, I can't remember. It's kind of hard to tell time when you can't see anything. All I know is I've been to a few places now, one world that was kind of cool, where the waters were warm and less salty and the beaches were made of some kind of hollow rocks that practically sung when the water moved in and out between them. I hung out there for a good while, riding the waves and listening to the rocks sing, but it wasn't helping with anything so I went on. After that was that one world where the water was really dirty and I felt like I was moving through sludge most of the time. It was horrible and I hated it and I felt sick for a while after even though I don't know how a consciousness can be sick. I guess I'm special like that. Then I hit up a world that was just surrounded by cliffs, and one where I traveled all the way through it in a really neat river that had waterfalls and underground caves and everything. That place was pretty cool. Now, though, I'm somewhere out in the middle of everything and I have no idea where I'm going to go next. I'm getting a feeling, from the way the waters moving, that there's a world nearby, and I think that I'll head that way and see what I can find. Or, feel, notice. Whatever.

It's not that far, and I'm getting close. I can tell because the waters moving differently, moving forward and then rolling back in on itself, and I can tell that's because there's a beach there. If there are cliffs there's a sort of… crashy feeling, the waters all chaotic and disjointed and stuff. I'm heading in with the flow and the waters taking me around an edge of this smaller island – it's really small, for a world, and then woah. There's a huge, huge piece of land ahead of me. The small island must have been just, well, a small island, and that huge thing in front of me that has the water dodging around it in all directions for, like, miles all around, that must be the world. Awesome. I let the stream carry me on towards that large land mass and try to get a feel for the place. There's tons of fish around, but they're all hanging out by the bottom and, oh hey, there's a coral reef out there too! I can feel the fish hanging out around the nooks there, and I'm pretty sure that shape that feels like a knife slicing its way through the water is a shark, a small one, but its moving around like its out on the hunt. I don't feel any fish up by the surface, and there aren't any hanging out by the edges of the beach, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say it's nighttime in this world. I don't know how the tides are out here, but I guess I'll see. For now I'm taking my time floating around and checking out if there are any inlets or streams coming into the ocean. If I can find any I can take a trip through the world and see what the waters inland hold. You can find a lot out about the world just from its water, like, what kind of animals live on it, if there are humans, all sorts of stuff. It's pretty cool, all this info from this one source. I wish I could see the world, as fun as drifting around with the water is, it'd be nice to actually look at it and see what it's like.

Well, I'm passing the beach by. There doesn't seem to be anything interesting happening there, and I stop following the flow of the water and start pushing off by myself. It takes a bit of work but I'm gliding past the edges of the higher banks and there's a spot where it gets stony and I can feel the water splashing against rocky edges and, hmmm, something roundish? Like, poles… no, thicker… trees? Palm trees? They're growing right on the edges of the water. I drift closer to the surface, but I can't get a feel for their shadows too well, but I do feel the starlight on the water. So I was right, it is night – awesome. I keep floating on along the banks, and the rocks are fading away into the feel of sand again. This beach though is smaller, more like just a little patch of sand at the edge of the water than a real beach. The waters splashing pretty far along it too, and I can just feel the edges of palm tree trunks and some stones and… well, that's not a part of the beach. The waters is just barely reaching a shape on the sand, no, two shapes. They're rounded just a little bit and they're not, well, natural. They kind of feel like… rubber, and they shift slightly as I'm trying to get a feel for them. Rubber… rubber soles… shoes? There's a slight gust of wind and the water splashes farther along them and I'm certain now, those are definitely shoes. I glide up against the surface, getting right to the top layer of the water, and try to send my senses out. There's a shift in the way the light is hitting the water – I think it's a reflection. It moves slightly, and I feel the shoes move too, just a little. Oh, wait, this reflection, it could be of whoever – it's a person, right, if there are shoes? – is sitting there at the edge of the water. I'm trying to get a feel for the reflection, to find its edges, when there's a shift in the air and the vibrations touch the water.

"What am I doing?"

A voice! Oh man, I haven't found anyone talking around the water in… well, forever. Well, at least as long as I've been part of the whole ocean thing. I stop trying to feel the reflection and start focusing on the voice. I can't say if it's a guy or girl, old or young, I'm just translation vibrations after all, but hearing a voice, after all this time, well, it's pretty cool. Scratch that, it's really cool.

"What the hell is happening? I don't…"

There's a vibration that sounds sort of like… a groan, an aggravated sigh, or something. Suddenly something hits the water with a splash – a stone, it's falling to the bottom. Geeze, it hit right where I'm at, too, and there're more vibrations. The person is talking but I can't make out what they're saying because the water's still settling after the stone toss. I try to make the water settle faster, but yeah right, like I can actually influence it. Pfft. I'm finally able to catch the vibrations from the voice again, but I have to focus harder because the person is talking quieter.

"Why hasn't he written back yet?"

Who? What's this person waiting for, a letter? Why's he out here on the beach at night, then? Weird. There's a shift in the sand, I can feel the way it pushes back against the water, and there's a new set of vibrations against the water – the shoes are gone, and whoever it is, is walking away across the sand. Dammit, guess I'm not going to learn anything more tonight.

Still, this place seems to be interesting. I think I'm going to stay here for a little while.

****

I spent most of the day floating around the main island. There were splashes out at the main beach, and I followed some boats out to the small island and tried to listen in on conversations. I still can't believe I found a place with people living so close to the water. All the other places I found either didn't have humans at all, or they were far above or far away enough from the water that I couldn't make out what they were saying. Here, well, there were just tons of them. A lot of the voices seemed to come from kids; they were talking about summer vacation, and playing games, and sometimes things would fall into the water, like sticks and balls and wooden disks. Once, as I was heading back to the main island, this weirdly shaped thing fell into the water, and I could make out voices sounding, all distressed and stuff. I was a little bit away but I found it as it was falling down to the sand. Fish were gathering around it, but I managed to figure out where the fish ended and the object started and it was weird, but it was shaped like a star, and it had leaves coming out at the points of the star. I guess it must have been a fruit or something, since the fish were biting it and eating it up, but I'd never seen one like that before.

I practiced a bit with getting a feel for reflections, too. Most of the reflections of people and boats would go by too quickly for me to get a good grip on them, so I hung out in places where there were a lot of palm trees and mucked around with them for a bit. It took a while, but I got the hang of figuring out where one reflection ended and another began, and I started trying to, you know, shape myself like the reflection. I mean, like, feel the reflection good enough that my… er, being, I guess, sort of flowed in its shape. Man, it's weird to explain, but that's the best I could do. Well, eventually I started to get a really good feel for palm trees. I mean, I was totally spot on with the reflections, I could move along with the way the light was hitting the surface, and then I totally figured something out. Okay, I had a little help, and it was sort of by accident, but hey that's how we learn, right? So I was just hanging out with this one reflection and just wasting time and I got kind of off my rhythm, like, not keeping up with the movements anymore, and then I heard someone sort of… gasp, and a conversation between what seemed to be two kids, and it went like this.

"Oh, hey! Hey, look at that!"

Look at what?

"What?"

"The reflection, of that tree! It's all weird. Look at it!"

What, weird? Excuse me?

"Woah, it's not moving right at all."

So, it kind of got me thinking, and I tried to, you know, move the water so the reflection would do what I wanted it to, like, by affecting the way the light and stuff was hitting the surface… aw man, I'm really bad at explaining things, but that's sort of what I tried to do. I guess it worked, because the kids sort of shrieked and gasped and I could make out their footsteps pounding away. I was so totally stoked; I mean, affecting reflections like that? I could make the water move and change the reflections, that's something, right? It's like, almost what I could do with my music, but it's a little different. More tiring, too, but still.

Anyways, I ended up playing around with reflections a bit, and scaring a few people too, I guess, what with all the gasps and stuff. After a while I could feel the sun light reflecting at lower and lower angles, and I headed back out to where I'd found the little beach the night before. I don't know if whoever had been there the night before would come back, but hey, I had time. I could wait. I hoped whoever it was did come back, I wanted to know more about this letter, and about what they were talking about. Seriously, this place was probably the most interesting of all the places I'd been in.

A good long while passed, with the tide going out and the fish scattering to the depths for the night. Moonlight and starlight had been shining down on the water for a while, and I was starting to think that tonight was going to be a no-show, but then there was the sound of sand crunching beneath shoes and the water started to touch at rubber soles again. I floated up to the surfaced and reached around, grabbing at the reflection at the surface and trying to see if I can't get a feel for who was standing above the water.

"Nothing."

There was an aggravated sigh. I'd caught the edges of the reflection and I was starting to feel for contours and changes in the light. I'd figured out a way to separate leaves from tree trunks earlier, and I thought I could figure out a way to do the same with this person's reflection. Maybe, if I could, I could find out more about them, like, if they were a guy or a girl and how tall they were and stuff like that. I was starting to grab at the contours of the person's face and shoulders and arms, but they shifted and turned a little and I lost hold of them for a moment. Dammit, this wasn't easy at all, and I was getting tired. Like, mentally, not physically, duh, but still.

"It'll come tomorrow…"

The person sounded a bit worried, a little hopeless too. The person was standing sideways to the water now, and from what I could grab from the reflection, I could figure that this person was a guy. Definitely a guy, or he'd have to be a really, really flat chested girl, but I doubted that. He was kind of tall too, a little bit taller than me back when I had a body. He seemed interested in something farther out, or it seemed like that with where his face was directed, and he wasn't saying anything, which was boring, so I played around with his reflection, just a little. It wasn't like I could do too much, it was kind of difficult holding onto it anyways. Trees were just trees, but humans made all sorts of little movements, so I focused really hard on trying to get a feel for things in the reflection. I could separate the arm from the rest of the reflection, but I couldn't really move it because I wasn't sure how to reflect the part that was behind the arm, so I just tried to move the fingers a little bit. It was annoyingly difficult, way too much effort, and I decided to stop and pay attention to the guy again, but I was a little late with that. Like, way late, because he was turned towards the water again, but I was still holding his reflection like he'd been standing before, sideways, and I'm pretty sure he noticed because while I let go of the reflection and felt it snap back into place, I could tell he was looking down at the water. Shit.

Well, he wasn't saying anything. I didn't try grabbing his reflection anymore, although I was tempted. Sorely tempted. Maybe if I grabbed it, just a little, I could feel what kind of expression he had on? I mean, just a little touch… Just a tiny, little –

I was totally not expecting that rock. The backsplash sent the reflection scattering, and I couldn't feel anything on the surface anymore. That was one huge rock, how did I not notice him picking it up? I dodged to a side where the splashes seemed to die down quicker, and hovered just under the surface.

"I don't know what you are, but you don't belong here."

Geeze, thanks. That makes me feel totally better. I floated in my little area and waited to see what else this guy would do, or say. I was a little shocked, though, I mean, he wasn't responding like everyone else did. Like, why did he think that someone was messing around with the reflection? Everyone else just thought they were seeing things. What made him different?

"Maybe you're the reason it isn't coming in…"

His voice got quieter, like he was thinking about something. I floated a little closer to his reflection, just close enough to feel for it. His head was tilted slightly.

"What…? Am I really talking at my reflection? Dammit."

There was a shifting in the sand, and I could feel from his reflection that he had sat down at the edge of the water again. I floated up against his reflection again, felt for it and decided to just go along with the flow of it for now. No need to get him angry. He wasn't doing much, just staring out at the water. Boring, again. It'd be nice if he talked a little, at least then I'd have something to pay attention to. Like this, though, I was seriously reconsidering hanging around. I mean, yeah, people are fun and all, but other than kids splashing around the beach and fisherman going out in their boats, there wasn't really all that much to do. This place was really quiet, and calm, and peaceful, and I guess I should've been cool with that, since it meant that I didn't really have to do anything, but… seriously. Bo-ring. I'm not exactly the most active person – er, consciousness, but even I can't just sit around doing nothing forever. I like the calm life, yeah, but I don't like it all… stagnant and stuff.

Which is why I started messing around with the guy's reflection again. Smart? No, but hey, no one ever accused me of that, right? Barely a minute passed and the guy was on his feet again, and I was still holding his reflection in the position he was before.

"What… who's doing that?"

I let go of his reflection again, holding onto it just enough to feel its shape as it snapped back into place. He was looking around, but he could do that all night, he wasn't going to find anything. I was hoping he was going to say something again, or do something, but he turned around and headed off instead. Well, awesome. Just great. I floated around the little beach for a while, but it was pretty clear that he wasn't coming back, and I headed back out to deeper water to just vegetate and wait for the sun to rise.


	2. Dermochelys coriacea, to be precise

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

I'm kind of pissed at the story. I mean, I try so hard to figure out where chapters go, and then it goes "HAHA" and it does something different from what I had planned.

I am also mad because this chapter is so long, and I have this horrible thing where once I write a really long chapter, I feel like I have to surpass it the next time around. Even if it's only a half-page shorter, I feel like a loser. So sad.

Writing Demyx is hard, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.

We're moving onwards! There are things happening, and things that are going to be happening, and all sorts of wonderful things. I can't believe it, but yeah, this story is really taking off. I'm happy, as annoyed as I can be with it, it comes pretty easily.

Well, I hope you all enjoy this next chapter! The next one might not update as quick as this one, but it will be coming.

**Thanks to:**

Different Realm

**Reviews** are always happily received! Cookies and cake for all who review! Yay!

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_Dermochelys Coriacea, to be precise_

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I spent the morning following a group of damselfish around the reef. They seemed to notice me if I came too close, and they'd scatter around and regroup on the other side of where I was. It was fun, and I played around with them for a while before letting them go back to doing their daily thing. Over the time I'd been in the ocean, I'd found I could grab things, sort of, if I focused hard enough, and I gave it a try with the damselfish a few times. They didn't like the idea too much, but I was figuring something else out in the meantime. If I remembered the shape of the fish, I could form the water in a way that would leave an empty spot shaped just like the fish. It was pretty cool, if I do say so myself, but then I got to thinking, hey, maybe I can try it in reverse, or, no, I mean, try the inverse. Like, not make an empty spot that was shaped like a fish, but shape the water I could affect into a fish.

And that's exactly how I spent most of the rest of day. It wasn't easy, at all, but I was getting kind of handy with it. I mean, it only took me a few hours to get the form of the fish down; that was a piece of cake. The hard part was, you know, keeping that form going for more than a few seconds. It was like hours and hours but it's not like I had anything better to do, so I kept at it. Just forcing it and focusing and trying to force it even more, man, I think I passed out, in a very ethereal consciousness like way, at one point, but I don't remember that clearly. Anyways, the sun was going down, and I had totally nailed the damselfish shape. You know what's even cooler? I. Had. Fins. Seriously. I don't know how I did it, if I just focused the right way or I just, remembered something that I'd forgotten before, but I was sitting there in the water holding the damselfish shape and then I… well, I didn't feel it, but I told myself I could feel it, the fin, and then I told myself I could move it, and I did. Then I told myself the same thing with the other fin, and it moved too. I was totally psyched, so I started telling myself other things, like that I could move my tail because I had a tail, and that I had a body so I can move that too. That's nothing though, I mean, the real thing? The really real coolest thing of all? I told myself I had all these things, and then I told myself I had eyes, and you know what?

I could see.

It was the awesomest thing to happen in a while. I mean, I could see. I'd totally forgotten how awesome seeing was. I'd forgotten how colorful a coral reef is, and how awesome it is to watch the fish all swimming around in it and watch the anemones and the urchins and everything. Oh man, it was so cool. I spent some time figuring out how long I could stay a fish, and it wasn't too long but I was getting better at it. The problem was, I think, keeping focus, which is hard when you're trying to look at everything at the same time.

Well, the sun was down and the sky was turning dark, so I let go of the fish shape and relaxed for a little bit. I was just totally wiped out, and I floated around a bit before heading out towards the small beach. I had no idea if the guy was going to be there, but I was still wondering about what he was talking about. I got to the beach but he wasn't there, or, at least I couldn't find his reflection anywhere. I thought about going all fishy and trying to see, but let's face it, fish don't have the best eyesight outside of the water. So I just sat around in the water a bit, and then I started thinking about how I got to hold a fish shape, and that I could probably try a different shape out too. I thought about it for a bit, and then I tried making a palm leaf – let's start with the simple things for now. Took me a while, but I managed to leaf myself up. I had no idea if I looked like a leaf, but I felt like one. Still, not what I wanted. What did I want, anyway?

Well, it'd be awesome if I had my body again, because then I could do all sorts of stuff – like find the guy who was coming to the beach and asking him what the hell he was talking about because man I really wanted to know now it's killing me. Anyway, I thought about it for a while. I mean, I could make water clones with my music, and that seemed pretty simple. So, why not? It didn't seem like the guy was coming out here tonight, so I might as well do something useful with my time. Haha, man, I was so bored.

What first? The whole body? Yeah, why not, let's just get that over with from the beginning. So, focus, form, and… remember? Yeah, I have to remember, what was it like to be… me… How tall was I? How much did I weigh? I was pretty average, right? I guess… I guess, well, I guess I could feel me. The water was moving around me, and I could feel me forming out of it. Man, it's pretty close to how I did the water clones, actually, only without the music, and I'm inside it, and not on the outside. I had to focus, if I didn't focus I'd lose hold of what I had, and what I had was… was…

Fingers. A hand. I could, I could, well, feel. Or was I remembering how to feel? Did it matter? I had a hand and it was reaching out of the water and it was on the sand of the beach. I reached, and wait, I had two hands, out in front of me – me, I had a body, I did – stretching, grabbing into the sand. I was grabbing the sand. I was grabbing at the sand, oh man, and I could pull myself. I had to remind myself that I had a body and I had a head and I had legs and I had eyes – eyes, I could see! – because I was losing focus. I managed to hold on to my focus, managed to pull myself forward, onto the sand of the beach. I could see it glimmering softly in the moonlight, I could see the little waves coming up on the sand and rolling back down. I could see my hand, and my other hand, and I could see my arms. I had gloves on, and there were black sleeves… oh, yeah, I remembered myself in my Organization coat, so yeah I had that on. Wow. Wow. I couldn't think straight at the moment, I just sat back in the water and looked at my hands and looked down at myself and tried to understand that I was really there. I was there, and I wasn't just a floating mass of water. I could see and I could hear and I could feel, too, if I focused enough.

There was a slight wind, and I closed my eyes and felt it against my face. I could smell the salt from the sea in the air, and a strange, pungent aroma that might have come from some night-blooming flower. I could hear the rustle of palm leaves and the near silent sound of the waves lapping at the sand. I dropped my hands to the sand and just sat there, soaking up the night sounds and scents. It was such a rush, having a body again, even a… well, fake one, I guess. Fake, but it felt like the real thing, and it moved when I wanted it to, so it was just as good. I breathed in the night air; I didn't have to breathe, but it felt good to feel the cool air inside me, to smell that heady aroma of the flower and the woody smell of the palm trees. I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky. I could see the stars above me and the moon too. This was so awesome, it was just so awesomely awesome.

I was tired. I was totally beat, but I still had my body. Weird, when I was a fish and I got tired I just… lost it, lost my hold on that form, but it wasn't like that now. I started wondering why, but then I stopped because hey, it wasn't worth it. Just, take it as it comes, you know? It's not worth over-thinking things, you end up just analyzing and analyzing and you don't get anywhere. Trust me, I know, I watched Vexen go over things over and over and over until he was ready to just, just explode. It's not worth it. I was just happy to have my form back. I pushed myself up off the sand and up on my feet. It was weird, standing, after all the time I was just floating around, but I figured out how to work my legs right. I mean, it wasn't that hard, I only wobbled once, just… okay, maybe a few times, but I got it working finally. I thought I'd go a little further up the beach, to test out this walking thing a bit and see if I could actually do it. I took a step, then another, and then I was stepping out of the reach of the water, and I ended up face planting as soon as I did. There was a sharp tug at my feet and legs, and I spat out a mouthful of sand and looked over to see what was wrong.

Well, I guess the ocean was having a bit of separation anxiety. I was, what, two feet away from the water's edge, maybe, and there was this tendril of water reaching out from the ocean, stretching across the sand and connecting with my feet. Weird. I rolled over onto my back and sat up, stared at the water tendril thing for a moment. I wiggled my foot, and the water wiggled all the way to the little waves at the edge of the beach. I tried pulling my foot farther away from the water, and the tendril stretched tight, but didn't give any, and I sighed and put my foot back. Bummer, it didn't look like I was going to be going anywhere. I had no idea what was wrong, but I had to figure out what to do with this before I could get going. I scooted down to the water line again, the tendril fading back into the sea as I got closer. I stopped when I was sitting in the water again, and it was weird but I could feel the water moving through me, you know, like, flowing around through my body. Huh, well, I guess this is what it feels like to be a water clone. I still couldn't understand why I couldn't go farther away from the water. Something I needed to work on, I gues. Man, this really sucked.

So, it was probably because I was all mopey and not paying attention when I should have been, but I totally did not notice that someone was coming until I heard the sand crunching right behind me. I turned to see who it was and…

"The Organization…?" He didn't look happy. Oh, and yeah, I totally knew who it was.

"Uh…" That wasn't a good response, so I put on my best smile and hoped I remembered how to talk. "Hey there."

"What are you doing here?" The guy said, the guy… the guy, his name was Riku, right? Right, the original keybearer, and the best friend of Roxas's somebody, Sora. He was the guy who was working with DiZ to totally mess up all of the Organizations plans and ruin things for all us Nobodies. Not cool. Also not cool was that there was a really good (scratch that, totally certain) chance that he could royally kick my ass if he wanted to.

"Just, visiting?" I said. He didn't look convinced, and he was getting this look in his eyes like he was considering doing something, so I stood up and turned around to face him and held my hands out. "Look, I'm not here to start anything, really. I didn't even know where I was."

"Right. You just happened to come to Destiny Island's by accident," Riku said, his eyes narrowing. I tried to think of a way out of this, and hey, I could just turn back into water and leave, but I didn't really want to lose my body (again), but, well, if I had to…

"I'm not working for the Organization…" I said, then paused to think about it. I doubted the Organization would know I was out here, anyway. "I think."

"You think?" Riku didn't look convinced.

"I don't even know what they're doing now," I grinned weakly and dropped my hands.

"They're not doing anything," Riku said, and that just sounded weird, because the Org was always doing something, but then he added, "They're gone."

"All of them?" I asked, a little surprised. Seriously, all of them? Xigbar, and Saix too? Man, that guy was like a rabid dog when he got let off the leash. Geeze, that meant that Xemnas wasn't around anymore either. "That's a bummer. Guess they went up against Sora, huh?"

"Yeah, they did," Riku took a few steps closer to me. I backed up in the water a little. "You did too… You're Demyx, right? The water user?"

"Bingo," I grinned, pointing at him. "I don't have any prizes, though, sorry."

"Why are you here?" He didn't look amused.

"Like I said, I'm just visiting. I thought this place felt interesting and I hung around," I said, shrugging. "I can leave, I guess, if it's a problem."

"How?" Riku asked, crossing his arms. He was looking at me closely, and it didn't feel good. Like, he was trying to take me apart with his gaze. X-Ray eyes. I didn't really get his question, though; how was I going to leave?

"How are you still around, if Sora defeated you?" He looked impatient.

"Oh, right. Yeah." I nodded sagely, "I don't know."

I frowned, thinking a bit, then shrugged. Whatever, like I said, it's not worth thinking things over all the time.

"Was that you, doing those things with the reflection?" Riku asked. Why was he standing here asking me things? I'd think that he should be going off to tell someone I was here, or trying to get rid of me, or something, if he still thought the Organization was the enemy. Maybe he wasn't doing that because the Organization wasn't around anymore?

"Er, yeah. I was trying to figure things out…" I said.

"Figure what out?" Riku asked, but he was starting to look distracted. I shrugged, then spread my arms out.

"This," I said, grinning. He didn't look like he understood. He shook his head and looked past me, out at the ocean. I turned a bit to look out there too, but I couldn't see anything other than the stars and moon reflecting on the water and the small island.

"You didn't notice anything out there… a bottle, or something?" Riku asked, and he was sounding really distracted now.

"Nope, but, you know, not like I was looking for anything," I said, turning back to him. He was looking at me again, his eyes all hard like he was thinking about something that wasn't really good. "Shouldn't you be trying to get rid of me, or something?"

"…You're just another sign," Riku said, and he walked over and reached out to touch my shoulder. "Really… just another sign."

"Sign of… what?" I asked. I wasn't totally following him. It felt weird, getting poked at like that. I mean, I couldn't feel it, per se, but just, sort of notice that the water was being displaced.

"You don't feel it?" He asked, and looked at me, straight at me. His eyes looked weird, like, they were focused, but unfocused at the same time. I think I was seeing something that wasn't really there to be seen, that's what it felt like.

"Feel what?" I didn't like that look that he had, I wasn't sure why, but I just didn't. He didn't answer for a moment, just stared hard at me before looking away across the ocean again.

"Did you ever wind up a music box? You turn the key, and the spring winds up, and the more times you turn the key the stronger the spring winds up… there's a point, though, where you just can't wind the spring anymore. You can keep turning the key, but it starts skipping, and the spring just turns, but it doesn't wind anymore. You can feel the skipping when you turn the key, and you're supposed to let go then, let the music box play itself out." Riku walked off to the side and looked up at the sky. "That's what it's like. There's a skipping, in the whole cycle. Sora set the key turning, and it's reached its limit, but it isn't letting go. The spring can't unwind."

I cocked an eyebrow and looked at him curiously. What in the world was he talking about? I tried looking out over the ocean and seeing, or, well, feeling, what he was, but I couldn't. Man, I was really, really wiped out. So, yeah, I could hold this form but I guess it was still a drain on me. I was feeling all weird, wobbly like and stuff. My hands were starting to feel kind of wrong, all distant and stuff. I looked down at them, and weirdest thing ever, they were getting all transparent and stuff, like, the color was bleaching out of them.

"Huh…" I held my hands out in front of me and watched as the colors just faded from my hands and my forearms, just leaving the water behind. I saw Riku turn to look at me from the corner of my eye, so I looked at him and wiggled my hands at him. "I think I'm running out of juice over here."

"What's happening to your body?" He asked, looking all confused and sort of surprised. I shrugged and grinned.

"Don't have one," I explained, watching as the color fade started going up my upper arm. "No heart, no body… Hey, am I still a Nobody then, or something else?"

"If you have no body and no heart, how are you still here?" Riku walked over closer to me, but I sighed and I think I rolled my eyes. All right, I did.

"Told you, don't know." I shook a hand, and droplets fell off into the water below. I was still holding my form, but I couldn't really feel it anymore, really, it was getting to be a real drag trying to keep standing there. "Look, I don't think I can hang around much longer. It's just way too long to hold onto this form, it's like, I think I reached my limit here."

"Can you come back tomorrow night?" Riku asked. He sounded sort of demanding, like, you know, it wasn't actually a question. I looked at him and he had this really sharp look in his eyes. Scary, you know.

"Er, I guess… yeah?" I was going to anyways, I still didn't have a clue what he was talking about, and I wanted to find out. Still, I didn't like that look.

"Good, I need to talk to you about something," Riku said. He turned that sharp eyed gaze out to the ocean again.

"Uh… 'kay…" I felt the water in my form dripping towards the waves I was standing in, seeping and seeping. "I'm gonna go now."

Riku turned to look at me again, but only for a second, and then he was walking back up the sand away from the water.

"Think about how we can travel," He said over his shoulder as he reached the edge of a path among the trees.

"Wha… Travel? What?" I called after him, but he didn't respond and just disappeared onto the path. Dammit, that wasn't nice at all. I let my form go and fell back in with the waves. The water was moving sluggishly in and out of the beach, and I floated off away from the sand and out towards the coral reef. Travel, huh? Who the hell did he think he was? I found a totally awesome little place to hang out in, and I got my body back, or something just as good, and he's all "travel" on me. He doesn't even know me! Hell, I don't even know him, and I sure as hell don't know what his problem is. I was so not going to be coming back the next night, let him figure out by himself. There was no way I was going to get involved in anything that had even a little bit of exertion and traveling and… and doing stuff involved with it.

****

All right, it was night, and I was back at the small beach. Yeah, yeah, I totally wasn't going to come back, but turns out chasing damselfish and clown fish around the coral reef is only fun for a little while. You know, I never liked doing stuff that wasn't fun, but that's sort of because I always had my sitar with me, and so when things stopped being fun I could just make them fun, with music. Without it I kind of feel… lost. Empty? Just, not there. The music's missing, and it's kind of boring doing nothing if you don't have something to fill the nothingness, you know?

So, whatever, I was at the beach again. I hadn't taken any forms during the day and I had my body on again and I was feeling pretty good. Maybe because I wasn't all worn out like the other night. I just sat there right at the edge of the water and looked out over it. The moon wasn't full anymore but the stars were out and shining all bright and stuff. I think I'm starting to understand this huge ocean thing. Stars are worlds, right? And the worlds are islands in the ocean. I remember feeling the starlight on the ocean, even when I was way, way out there, so there had to be worlds above it. But, like, what if the ocean wasn't flat? What if it curved around, like the inside of a sphere, and all the worlds were stuck in the shell of the sphere, just sticking out a bit on either side? All of them are glowing out there and reflecting against the ocean and sending their light back to other worlds. It was a pretty cool thought.

"We have to find a way to get off this island…"

I jumped a bit, all right, but I didn't yelp. I didn't. I'm just not used to having people appear out of nowhere. Riku was looking at me, and I sighed and leaned back on my arms.

"Why are you including me in this whole little… thing, of yours?" I asked. Seriously, there had to be a way to find out more without actually getting involved.

"Because you're part of the problem," Riku said, and walked over and sat down on the sand at the edge of the water. I frowned at him and looked back out at the sea.

"Gee, thanks," I waited for him to say something else, but he didn't. "So, being part of the problem, why are you talking about going somewhere? I mean, shouldn't you be trying to get rid of me, instead?"

"Sora tried to get rid of you, and yet here you are," Riku sighed. He ran a hand through his hair and glared out at the water. He looked really, really pissy at the moment.

"So, what do you want from me?" I kicked my feet out in front of me, deeper into the water, and focused a bit on making drops jump up from the surface of the water. Heheheh, it was kind of fun.

"You've been part of the ocean." I turned back to him and found him giving me an irritated look. Why? Did he not like jumping water? "Were you always here around these islands?"

"No…" I sort of dragged out the word. "The ocean goes to more places, you know. Way, way out there."

"Different worlds?" Riku asked. He looked interested now, his eyes got a little spark in them.

"Yeah, they're all connected in the ocean. The water goes everywhere." I put my hands on my knees and grinned at him. "Absolutely everywhere, I mean, if you had all the time, ever, then you could probably hit all the worlds without ever leaving it. The ocean, I mean."

"So all the worlds… they're like islands, on a cosmic sea," Riku looked up at the sky. I looked too; there were tons of stars up there, twinkling all around.

"Yup," I nodded.

"Then where does gummy space fit in?" Riku asked. He was looking up at the sky with a weird expression on his face, like he was musing on something.

"In between." I answered. He looked over at me, eyebrow raised skeptically. I held out my hands and made them into a circle. "See, the oceans the shell of a sphere, right? And the islands are all stuck in it… like… like cloves in an orange."

"Cloves in an orange?" Riku asked, and I nodded. He sort of squinted. "What are cloves?"

"They're…" I thought about it for a second. "They're these things you stick in an orange, and then it smells good."

"Yeah, that really made things clear," Riku rolled his eyes and shook his head. I dropped my hands and glared at him.

"Look, they're just things you stick in an orange, and right now they represent islands, stuck in the ocean. Of space. All right? Gummy space goes in the empty part inside the shell of the sphere. It's like, the ocean is the orange's skin, and the islands are the cloves, and Gummy space is all the orange wedges stuck inside there." I continued explaining.

"So where does the sun and moon… or, multiple suns and moons, come into play?" Riku asked, giving me a look that said he totally thought I was being a smart ass or something. I frowned.

"They don't." I crossed my arms and turned back to the ocean. Stupid cocky jerk.

"Whatever. I don't need an essay, I just need to know how to get to other worlds," Riku said, and shifted a bit on the sand.

"Why?" I spared a glance sideways at him.

"I need to find… someone, ask him some questions," He was looking all dark-eyed and lost-in-thought again. What the hell. Was I ever going to find out what was going on?

"Who? And what questions? And why can't you just do that whole darkness portal thing? I mean, I remember people saying you could do it," I asked, and Riku started to frown.

"I can't anymore." He was starting to look a little mean too, like this totally wasn't a question he wanted to answer.

"You never know until you try," I said, and grinned, and yeah maybe it was a little nasty, that grin, but he deserved it. Riku sent me this mean glare, then held out his hand in front of himself and wham, there was a beam of light stretching out from either side of his fist. Oh, well, shit, that is totally a Keyblade light, I know that light. Was that it, then? Did I really piss him off, and was he going to try to… to take my head off, or cut me into pieces, or something? Would I survive if he did? Shit. Shit. I was having a little panic-party in my head.

The light started getting dark, and these purple-black tendril things started stretching all across it, and then it just… well, sound effect here sounded sort of like a _bloooeeeewoooop_ or something, and the dark tendrilled light disappeared, and left a Keyblade behind. Thing was, it wasn't like any Keyblade I'd ever seen before, and I'd seen my share. You know, with Roxas running around whacking Heartless all the time, and with the whole fight with Sora thing. I don't know what kind of Keyblade Riku had been using, but I don't think this was it. It looked all… twisted, and stuff. The handle, one half looked like a dark angel wing, and the other half looked like a large cog from a clock or something. The shaft was a dark metal, and it looked like it'd been beaten on with a whole bunch of… everything, all scratched up and battered. It stretched out and started to form a sort of bat wing shape, but it was broken halfway through, and the blade part was another cog, larger than the one on the handle, and it looked like it'd been welded on to the shaft by a really inexperienced person. Like, a five year old could do better. The whole thing just looked nasty, seriously.

"Do you know what this is?" Riku asked, and his voice was all low. I fidgeted a little.

"A… Keyblade?" I answered. Of course it was a Keyblade.

"Do you know what this does?" Riku asked, and his voice got a little louder, but it was still all… weird sounding. I grinned at him, but it wasn't a good grin.

"Uh…" I don't know, or I sort of do know, but please don't show me. Please don't show me, please…

Riku swung the Keyblade back, and it came, like, within an inch of my shoulder, I could feel the wind come off of it, and then he whipped it forward again and sent it flying out over the water, flipping end over end until it crashed down with this gigantic splash.

"Nothing." Oh man, he sounded pissed. "It doesn't do anything. It doesn't open locks, it doesn't close locks, and it sure as hell can't open any doorways or passages to other worlds."

I flinched a little; he was seething so bad I could practically feel the heat.

"Why don't you ask Sora to try his Keyblade?" It was a simple idea. Riku sat there staring out over the water for a little while.

"Sora's sick." His voice was back to normal, or, what was normal for when he was talking to me. "I think it has something to do with… whatever is going on in the worlds."

"The skipping in the spring?" I supplied. He nodded, turned to look at me.

"I need a way to get to other worlds. The only way left is the ocean." He said, all serious toned. "There has to be a way to travel it. You've been part of it, you have to know something."

Oh, I have to know something, do I? I prop my elbows on my knees and put my chin on my hands and think on it for a moment. What should I tell him? Boat? Ship? Well, they might be able to make it, but there isn't that much wind on the ocean, from what I remembered. So, a boat with a motor? They had some of those here, I was pretty certain. I thought for a bit more, and then I said screw it.

"Sea turtles," I said, grinning at him. Thank you, Captain Jack. If you hadn't been such a weirdo, Luxord wouldn't have told us stories about you and I wouldn't have gotten out of this mess. "You should use sea turtles. See, because boats and stuff might not make it, but sea turtles totally can. I saw them around all the time."

Riku stared hard at me for a long, long moment. Then he grinned.

Wait, what?

"Great, so you figure out how to be a sea turtle, and I'll pack the supplies," He said, and stood up. He brushed the sand off of his pants as I sat there, staring at him. Utter shock.

"What? No, no I mean, how am I going to do that? I can't do that." What just happened?

"Sure you can. You made yourself a body, right? So, just make a body that happens to look like a sea turtle. A big one." Riku held out his arms in a big circle. "We'll leave tomorrow night."

"I am NOT going anywhere, and I am definitely NOT going to make myself a sea turtle." I glared at him, but he just looked amused. Amused.

"Fine, suit yourself. If you want to spend the rest of your existence as nothing more than animated water, it's your choice," Riku shrugged and turned around to head up the sand. I twisted a little to keep glaring at him.

"I am perfectly fine as animated water," I shot back, but he just shook his head and kept walking. Bastard, who did he think he was? Just coming up with ideas and expecting me to go along with them. Like he had any… any sort authority over me. All he had was a funky Keyblade that didn't work. Pffft. And me? I had all the water in the universe to coast through. I didn't need anything else, not any adventure, and not visiting worlds, and not asking people questions to figure out why whatever the stupid skipping spring thing was and why I couldn't feel it when he could, nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was just fine as I was. Perfectly. Fine.


	3. No One Left To Tell you The Truth

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

How do you write someone who isn't supposed to have emotions?

Well, in my case, I tend to go Dungeons & Dragons on the whole thing: Nobodies are Chaotic, by nature, because they tend to follow their impulses and instincts, sort of like Heartless. The difference is, Heartless are purely Chaotic, in that they don't have any purpose – they just want hearts. They do whatever, they have no grand idea (generally) of what they want to accomplish. Xehanort's heartless, obviously, was a bit of a deviation from this, but he was still entirely focused on hearts.

Nobodies, on the other hand, are Chaotic – plus. They are generally not Chaotic Good, at least, not as we can see it, because they don't work against the darkness/evil/etc and they do not always act in the best intentions of those around them. Some are Chaotic Evil – anything, as long as we get what we want when we want it (Xemnas, Marluxia, Larxene, Saix, Xaldin, Vexen) and some are Chaotic Neutral – We've got orders, but we'll accomplish them however we want to, or else we'll just do whatever the hell we want at the moment (Xigbar, Axel, Demyx, Luxord, and probably the others although I'm not that sure at this point).

Now, it helps to think of Good in terms of "Positive" and Evil in terms of "Negative", rather than the usual connotations of Good and Evil. Neutral is neutral – it's what I like to call the "Whatever" field. A lot of people float on through the Chaotic Neutral spectrum, yes, even you! Amazing!

That seems to be a large area for Nobodies as well – they do whatever, and they have a purpose, but that purpose can be bent or flexed to match whatever they want to be doing at the moment.

Chaotic Neutral is pretty awesome, what with being all flexible as it is.

Yes, all right, enough of the AN, time to get on with the story. Man, it feels like it's just NEVER GOING TO END. I love it.

I love it so much.

Story! I love you!

**Thanks to:**

Different Realm

**Reviews** or I will start begging and no one wants to see that. Really.

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_No One Left To Tell You The Truth_

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Turns out being a sea turtle is pretty damn hard. If I had one flipper down, the other was washing back into the water. If I got the head working, I couldn't figure out where my tail was. There, there was supposed to be a tail, right? Man, man this was tough. There were a lot of sea turtles around the ocean when I'd been out there, drifting around, so I thought I had a pretty good idea what their shape was and everything, but it was just so different from a human shape, and it was so huge compared to a fish shape, that I really had no idea what I was doing with it. I mean, seriously. A sea turtle. Why was I even doing it? I mean, not like I was going to get anything out of it, except more work. Swimming and going places and meeting people. Ugh, it just sounded horrible. Why couldn't I be figuring out a way to get out of the water, and back to playing and just hanging out? Why was I trying to be a sea turtle, and getting ready to go off on some weirdo adventure with a guy who was acting more and more like a jerk each time I talked to him?

I… didn't really know. I just, went whatever, you know? I'm a real big go-with-the-flow guy, I guess, and when things start happening, I could get caught up in them real quick without really noticing. So I was out there, trying to think like a sea turtle and feel like a sea turtle and be the sea turtle, and each time I wanted to say screw it and go back to hanging out with the starfish, I'd hear Xiggy's voice in my head, all "You got promise, kid, but you're not gonna get anywhere by just hanging around" and "You can't really _exist_ unless you do something with yourself. You're just taking up space, otherwise." Yeah, he'd talk like that when we were hanging around after missions, all acting like, like, I don't know, a big brother mentor guy, and then he'd laugh and be all like, "You're like jello, you know? You're there, but you're all see-through so people forget about you, and then you dry up and turn into jello-jerky and get thrown out with the rest of the trash." I didn't really get him sometimes, he used the weirdest analogies ever, but the stuff he said, it sort of stuck with me, you know? He was right, you can't really be unless you're doing something, you can't really exist unless you have a purpose. So, maybe that's what this whole thing is; I've got a purpose now, or something. You know, I can do something with myself. I sort of… feel useful, which is stupid since I'm not really feeling anything, or I'm not supposed to at least. I never got that either, how the whole "no-feelings" thing was really, since I know I'd get scared of stuff. Zexion said it was just "self-preservation" kicking in, but whatever, his big book of stuff made one mistake, and I know it did, so it probably made other mistakes too.

The water out past the little island was a lot calmer than the area by the large beach, and I chilled out there, trying out how to get this sea turtle form to work. It wasn't. There was absolutely no way for me to be a sea turtle, especially by tonight, which was probably coming soon since the sun was dropping closer and closer to the horizon. I tried to force my shape into a sea turtle, and nothing. I just tried to relax into the shape of a sea turtle. Nothing. Why was it so freaking hard to be a sea turtle? I didn't get it; I pulled the fish off, right? And that was sort of complicated. So what gives? I floated around in the water for a while, trying to figure out what was wrong. The moon was coming up, just a piece missing on the outer side. I drifted towards the smaller beach, feeling the moonlight on the top of the waves. Oh well, I gave it my best. No sea turtle, not tonight.

Riku was waiting for me on the beach, sitting at the edge of the water, a bag slung around his shoulders. He didn't look too surprised when I showed up in my regular form and sat down in the water in front of him.

"So, no sea turtle," He said it like he'd been expecting it all along.

"No sea turtle," I answered, kind of feeling bitter about it. Stupid bastard, making me feel like I was feeling bitter, when I wasn't because I couldn't feel at all. I wanted to kick him.

"You know why?" He asked, and I started to snap back but he kept talking. "You don't want it. You're comfortable here; it's peaceful and there's people around and all sorts of animals. You can just relax and do whatever you want, which isn't much more than sitting around in the water and chasing fish, but you think that's good enough."

I frowned at him; what was he trying to get at.

"Sure it's enough. What the hell do I need to go around the worlds for? Again? I already maxed out my miles," I snorted and crossed my arms.

"How long do you give yourself?" He asked, leaning his arms on his knees and tilting forward a little to look me in the eyes.

"What?" Why did he have to talk like that? I had no idea where his weird… tangents kept coming from.

"As a, well, water ghost… thing," He cocked an eyebrow. "How long before you lose the "ghost" part?"

"As long as I want," I huffed, "I'm a very… conscious type of water ghost thing, I'm… I'm aware."

"Sure, sure," Riku waved one hand dismissively. "I'm sure that just being aware is fine."

"It is fine," I retorted, dropping my hands. "I can tell what's happening, and I have a body now, I can interact or whatever whenever I want to."

"True…" Riku sort of looked to the side and reached out to pick up a stick from the sand. "It'd be nice if you could actually get out of the water to do that, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, well, to do that I need a real body, don't I?" I snapped back. Dammit, wait, I wasn't supposed to let that out. I glared at him and tried not to think about what he'd said, but yeah right, like that would work. A body, a real one. That'd be awesome, that'd be amazing. I could keep pretending this animated water clone I was using was a real body, but the differences were enormous. Gigantic. Gigantimongous. If I didn't focus, I wouldn't even be able to tell whether the wind was blowing, or if there were any scents on the air, or if the waves were really splashing around me and onto the sand of the beach. Without focusing, I wouldn't be able to make my eyes see or make my ears hear. Without focusing, I was just… water, in a different shape.

I don't know when I'd started looking past Riku and at the island, but I did, and I was looking at the trees, and above the trees there were sort of paths among them, and then houses farther out, with lights shining in some of the windows. Lights and people and lives out there. I wanted to be part of that, wanted to be part of something that was actually living and breathing and existing.

"When the cycle gets reset, everything goes back to the way it was," Riku said suddenly. I looked at him, wondering if I looked as dejected as I felt at the moment. Dejected, walked over, run over by a freaking bulldozer of oh-hey-wake-up-you're-nothing-important-at-all.

"So?" I brought my knees up to my chest and rested my chin on them. He looked all serious again, his eyes were sort of dark but not exactly, kind of like the sea right after a storm.

"If we can get the cycle unstuck, then things go back to normal." He said, which was pretty much what he said before, only with different words.

"Normal, meaning what?" I sneered. Normal. What's normal? Normal doesn't exist anymore.

"Normal. For me, that means Sora being healthy and Kairi being happy, and my world no longer shadowed by some unknown fear, and the people no longer living like every day is their last," Riku's eyes got all distant, but I was a little, er, unnerved I guess. I didn't notice anything wrong with this world, but I guess he knew it better so he'd have a better feel for whether or not something wasn't right. He looked back at me, like straight at me. "For you, it means getting your body back. Body, and maybe…"

I narrowed my eyes; getting my body back, yeah, I could believe that. Getting… getting that back… I laughed, yeah right. Yeah, right.  
"When the cycle resets, anything can happen," Riku shrugged, and pointed the stick he was holding at me. "Whatever you want, can happen."

Whatever I want. I looked at the distant lights… Whatever I want, whatever…

I want…

I want…

"If… I… I guess," I looked back at him, "I guess I could try again."

Riku just grinned, and tossed the stick aside. I closed my eyes, and focused.

****

I didn't know what I was doing anymore. Sea turtles aren't exactly a reliable method of transportation, so I have no idea why Riku thought this was a great idea. Either way, I was a sea turtle, shell and everything, and Riku was on my back, and we were doing a practice swim out to the little island. Well, practice, more like a little hop before we took the leap out onto the ocean. Sea turtles are pretty damn buoyant, huh, and it wasn't even all that hard swimming with someone on my back. The hard part was, you know, being a sea turtle. It was just weird. Super weird.

"This is weird," I said , turning my sea turtle-y head towards Riku. I couldn't see all the way onto my back, and that was weird too. Awesome that I could talk though, I had no idea how that worked out. Did sea turtles have vocal cords? Weird.

"We're going to have to find a better mode of transportation eventually," Riku said, and I could feel him shift around on my back. "Still, it's better than nothing. We should start heading out."

"To where?" I waved my flippers around and turned in the water. It was kind of fun, having flippers. Like, single propellers, only as arms.

"Disney Castle." Riku said. I flipped my flippers, heheh, and turned towards the ocean.

"Okay… wait, what?" My flippers flipped a little too much, and I felt water splash up across my back. "What? Where? Why there, why are we going there? No, no, why are you going there, you, because I am not going there…"

"Calm down, will you?" I felt Riku grip the edge of my shell. "Everything's going to be fine, you're with me."

"Oh, yeah, I feel so much better now," I turned a slow circle in the water. "So much better."

"The King is there, and he should know something about what's going on," Riku said. He sounded a bit impatient, but so what? The King, The King was one of the guys going around messing our plans up, too. Like he was going to be all amnesty on me just because of Riku. Right. Right. Bastard, how the hell was he getting me all mixed up in this stuff? Why was I going along with it?

Why was I getting hit in the head?

"What?" I stopped flailing around.

"Look, just head out on the ocean, and we'll try to get our bearings. We'll head for Disney Castle, and when we get there I'll be the one to go on the world and talk to people, and you can stay in the water, and no one has to now you're there," Riku sounded like he was trying to be extremely patient. I didn't get why he was in such a hurry to get going. Whatever.

"Fine." I turned back towards open water and started floating out. I was such a tool sometimes.  
The little island got left behind as I flicked my flippers harder. Sea turtles weren't really meant for swimming up at the surface, but I made it work somehow. We got farther and farther from Destiny Islands, and I saw the night sky, with its nearly-crescent moon, slowly fade away to a large expanse of black with tiny little spots of light in them. The water out there was colder, and a bit choppier too. I heard Riku take a sharp breath.

"Damn, it's cold." He muttered. He shifted on my back a little. "So, we're out already?"

"Yeah," I said, craning my neck to take a look at the sky above. Well, weird, I thought it was black, but when I looked at it a bit closer, I could see little itty-bitty strands of purple and blue and a deep, deep red stretching all across the sky.

"A boat wouldn't have made it," Riku said suddenly.

"You think so?" I asked. He sounded pretty certain, and cold. His teeth were chattering as he talked. "You okay?"

"I'll be okay," There was a sound of paper unfolding. "I could feel the change, when we left. An invisible wall, almost. It didn't want to let me through, but it did. I don't think a boat or ship would have been able to leave."

"Well, good thing we have sea turtles," I muttered, dropping my head back to the water. I heard him chuckle. "What're you doing now?"

"Trying to plot a course," There were more sounds of paper shuffling. "When we were traveling, The King and I, we made maps of the stars around the worlds, in case we got lost. I had almost thrown them away after… Well, I didn't, and I think they'll come in handy now."

"Hey," I said, but there was silence, so I tried again. "Hey, Riku?"

"Yeah?" He sounded preoccupied. Maybe I shouldn't have been bothering him when he was looking at the maps. Oh well.

"What's wrong with Sora?" I asked.

"What?"

"Sora, you said he was sick," The water splashed a bit harder at my face. I blinked and splashed my fins right back at it. Take that, ocean. Haha.

"Stop splashing, will you? You're getting the map wet," Riku sounded aggravated now, great. "Sora's just sick, that's it."

"That's it?" I wasn't convinced; I'd find out, I would. Just watch me.

"That's it, now turn a little to the left and start swimming." Riku said, all commanding and stuff. Ugh, commanding tones, how I detested them. Why did people always want to order me around? Did I have a Loser sign on my back, or something? Well… maybe.

"What was going on with your world?" I asked. Different tangent, but maybe this'll get him talking. Riku sighed pretty loudly.

"Typical heartless symptoms," He shifted on my back again. I could feel him tapping his fingers against my shell. "Overbearing sense of despair, people acting all paranoid, rumors of strange happenings."

"And heartless?" I asked, drifting a little to the left. There seemed to be a current here that was heading in the way we were going, so I hooked onto it and angled my fins to catch it and let it push me along. Haha, work just got halved! I was so awesome.

"That's the thing…" Riku sounded cold and angry, and all unfocused now too. Geeze, he wasn't going to freeze on the way, like, all solid and stuff? That would seriously suck. "There weren't any heartless, anywhere. It doesn't make sense…"

There was silence for a long time, minutes passed or more, I don't know. Hard to tell when nothing's changing around you. Even the stars above didn't seem to move too much in the sky. I sent out my water feely senses and tried to see if there was anything ahead of us. Empty water, empty water, oooh, a fish. More fish. Something like a really, really big eel or something, but that was way below us. A bottom feeder, or deep sea fish thing, it probably wouldn't bother us, which is great, because it was pretty huge, it displaced a load of water.

"Hey?" I asked, "Hey, you still alive?"

"Yeah…" Riku snorted. I could practically feel him shaking now. Not good, I guess. He shifted a bit. "Just… It's all so… disorienting."

"I know, right? Like, what is up with this place?" I shook my turtle head and turned it a little to look back up at the sky. "The stars, they're barely moving. The only thing that's moving is the ocean, but it's like, you have to feel it, you know? Otherwise you wouldn't know."

"It looks like glass," Riku's voice was a bit softer, "Black glass."

"What?" I looked out, but I could see choppy waves and the glitter of the starlight on wave crests. "It's an ocean."

"Maybe to you… All I see is…a flat, black plane. With starlight reflecting off of it." Riku said, "It's weird, I know it's water because I can see you splashing against it, but if I'm not looking at you, it looks different."

"Huh, guess it's a perception thing?" I shrugged, but shrugging doesn't really work too well with sea turtles, what with their shoulders being in their shells, or something like that. Riku fell silent again, and I didn't really have an idea about what to talk about, but then the water around me started to get all ripply and refracted or something, but it wasn't the water just my water sense thing, which meant that there was something ahead of me. A world? Yeah, yeah, I could feel the water circling around something ahead of me. The current I was in was gliding right past it. Disney Castle? I didn't know, was it too soon? Soon, late, long, short, geeze, this place was seriously messing around with my sense of time, and it wasn't all that good anyway.

"There's something ahead of us," I said, and I felt Riku move on my shell. When he talked his voice sounded closer to my head.

"Finally!" He sounded all exasperated.

"What, was it like a long ride?" I asked. Seriously, it was confusing.

"Yeah, it was…" Riku's voice sort of faded away, and then he started laughing. Which sounded weird, because I guessed he was still all freezing and stuff since his teeth were chattering and he was all shivering up there. "You couldn't tell?"

"No… I mean…" I angled out of the current I was in and headed towards the large disturbance in the water.

"Can water tell time?" Riku asked suddenly. Great, another one of his stupid tangents. What the hell was it with him and his weird little… non sequiters.

"Uh…" Thank you, thank you for totally confusing me, again.

"Think about it, a body can get fatigued, or hungry, or thirsty, right?" Riku said. He sounded way too much like a teacher right then. I didn't like teachers. Too much homework, not enough awesome.

"Yeah, and?" I flicked my flippers, a little irritated.

"What happens with water over time?" He asked.

"Er… it can evaporate, or… or flow somewhere else if there's the opportunity," Did I really need a science lesson at the moment? Did I?

"What happens with water if it's in a void?" Riku's fingers gripped at the edge of my shell, and I could feel how his hold was all shaky. Whatever. I didn't like his question.

"Shut up," I really didn't like his question, I didn't like it so much I didn't want to focus on it. It was a stupid question and he was stupid and this was all stupid. Stupid. There was a long moment of silence.

"Hey…" Riku started, and he just proved how stupid he was because his tone was all apologetic and stuff. Like there was something to be all apologetic about, like, like I was hurt or something by his stupid question, when I so wasn't.

"We're almost there," I cut him off. I didn't want to hear his stupid questions anymore. "We'll be crossing into the world soon."

"All right," He didn't really sound… anything then. Good, I wasn't in the mood to be deciphering his tones and questions and whatever. If his maps were right, then this might just be Disney Castle, and I could just toss him off and leave and just not look back. Ever. Ever ever.

I swam up to where I felt the water start to shudder, and headed in.


	4. Broken Ice Still Melts In the Sun

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

RARGH.

Guess who's gonna cosplay Demyx at Anime Central this year? Huh? Huh? Guess? Guess? I'll give you three guesses! :D

Now that that bit of silliness is out of the way *omg maybe not yet all the way… okay, I'm fine now* enjoy a new chapter! Yes! 9 glorious pages! Amazing!

IT'S ELECTRIC! *starts doing the electric slide like a loser*

Thank you for the reviews and the favorites! :D Much love!

**Thanks to:**

Crimson Cutie

**Reviewness is awesomeness!**

* * *

_Broken Ice Still Melts In The Sun

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"Hey, does this look like Disney Castle to you? I don't know, it doesn't look very… castle-y." I picked my head up out of the water as far as I could, but all I could see was the muddy banks of the river we were in, and the slowly rising grass covered incline just beyond them. The ground seemed to flatten out after that, and I couldn't really make out anything other than a really huge tree somewhere far off.

"Demyx…"

Huh, Riku sounded a little worried. I wondered why.

"You know, I don't really see a castle anywhere, do you?" I turned my head the other way, but nope, nada, no castle. Just more grassy, er, plain, or something. Oh, and some bushes. It was really quiet, too. I mean, really, really quiet. No birds, no nothing. Just… silence, kind of like how in movies it gets really quiet right before –

I was gone. No, that was wrong, I was there, I was just stretched out like a piece of plastic wrap, all shiny and thin and practically gone but not because I could still feel the edges of my being, getting all spread out far and far and far. I couldn't see anymore, I couldn't hear anymore, I couldn't feel anything except stretching and stretching and bursting and oh man, oh man, I couldn't feel me anymore. I was gone. I was totally gone, but I couldn't be gone because I could still think. If I could think, that meant I was still around, right? Right?

I stretched out my senses as far as I could, felt my being stretched across droplets and droplets and splashes and ricochets. I reached out and out and grabbed at the edges of myself and held onto them as they – it – I rained down into the river below.

I had no idea what had happened. I mean, geeze, it was like what, half a minute? A minute? I passed into the world's sphere, and wham. Kaboom. Disaster. Where'd my senses go? I mean, I used to be able to feel danger coming a mile away.

I flailed around a bit as watery… water, trying to catch my bearings and get a feel for the waters around me. They were muddy, all churning with soil and bits of grass, and there was something really, really huge towards the middle of the water. Huge, and whipping around a really long… something. Whatever it was, it was making the river water go all crazy, and it was really throwing off my sensing for what was going on.

Whatever it was, it had taken out my sea turtle form in one hit, but I wasn't about to go changing into a human body in the middle of a deep river with a monster in it, so I focused as hard as I could and reformed into a sea turtle. Didn't help much, the ocean was a lot clearer than this river, and all I could see was floating pieces of grass and dirt all around me. I paddled up and surfaced at the top of the water, trying to see what the hell was going on.

Just a few feet away from me the water was spraying all around a really, really big… uh, well, I couldn't see what it was at the moment, it just sort of seemed to disappear among the splashes, but. But, off to the left there was a… a… I tried to focus on the bobbing head of a, er, something, when a huge scaly tail whipped around in the water, splashing everything, and holy shit it was a crocodile. It was a huge crocodile. It whipped its head up out of the water and around towards the – the – the, dammit, oh! Oh, it's a leopard! Okay, so this huge crocodile with its mouth all open with all its teeth all pointy and stuff was lunging towards this leopard that was trying really hard to swim away towards the far bank, but it wasn't about to get anywhere fast, I mean, leopards just aren't really water animals. They're… cats. And cats do not like water.

One thing I wasn't seeing, though, was Riku. Where was he? Did he get eaten already? Did the giant scaly water lizard swallow him? It could have! It was big enough, but if it'd eaten him, then it wouldn't be chasing the leopard, right, because it wouldn't be hungry anymore. Ugh, whatever, the leopard gave out this loud yowl and the crocodile was totally going for it, and I dove into the water and pushed off with my fins and just rammed the damn lizard in the gut. Just, wham! Man, it hurt. Damn thing, it was like a freaking tank, all its scales and, and hard skin and stuff. I got a little dizzy from it, no kidding. Then, then, haha, it's tail whipped around and sliced through me and just like that I was watery goo again. What the hell? This was so freaking tiring and confusing and I pushed up towards where I thought the surface was and reformed into the sea turtle and hoped the stupid croc wasn't going to try to eat me next.

I came up in time to feel something jump over my head towards the crocodile. The lizard snapped its jaws, but it totally missed the… the leopard? When the hell did leopards learn to fly? Whatever, the cat had somehow managed to jump out of the water and land on the croc's back, and now it dug its claws into the croc's back and started to whack it with the Keyblade it was gritting in its teeth. The Key- woah, woah, wooooaaah, wait a second. What the hell? Where did this leopard get a Keyblade? Not just any Keyblade, the Keyblade Riku showed me. Like, his Keyblade. And this leopard had it.

I floated there and stared as the leopard beat the living snot out of that damn crocodile. Whack, whack, whack, and the lizard finally had enough and dove under, leaving the leopard to flounder in the water, the Keyblade vanishing in this little puff of light and purple-ness. The leopard paddled over to me and slipped and clawed and somehow managed to pull itself up on my back. I was still staring at the spot where the crocodile had disappeared.

"Get to the bank," The leopard said, all breathing hard and sounding pissed. I know that voice.

"What the hell." I turned towards the closer bank and took off swimming towards it. "What. The. Hell."

The leopard said nothing, just waited for me to get to the bank and jumped off onto it. It shook itself off and turned around to look at me. Weird. It had hair, like, silver-greyish hair. And its fur was a dusty grey sort of color with darker spots, that's not how leopards look normally, right? I pushed myself up onto the bank a little bit.

"Why do I have hair?" The leopard said, shaking its head and staring up at the strands that fell over its forehead.

"I don't know, Mr. Leopard," I was so confused. Why wasn't my head working? Crocodile, leopard, river, grass… What world was this? I couldn't catch a hold of my thoughts, I felt all disconnected and stuff. Like, like I was still picking up pieces of me up off the river bottom. Maybe I got all puzzle-pieced by the crocodile, and I needed to find the pieces and fit them back together? Maybe? Where was I?

"I'm not a leopard!" The leopard snapped – er, growled. Then it sort of groaned, and put a paw to its forehead. "I'm Riku."

"What? Ohhh…" Aha, the Keyblade thing and stuff. Oh, good, so he wasn't eaten by the croc. That was a good thing. "Wait, why are you a leopard? With hair?"

"I don't know," Riku sighed, putting his paw back down on the ground and taking a look around. "I'd like to know, though."

He picked up his other paw and looked at it for a long while, then closed his eyes and seemed to focus on something. He peeked one eye open, then grimaced.

"Guess I'm stuck like this for now." He looked at me, then frowned. Well, I think he frowned, it's kind of hard to tell with cat faces. "You're getting all wobbly."

"What?" I sort of felt wobbly.

"And see through. Are you okay?" He got up and took a few steps in my direction. I tilted my head and lifted a flipper – wow, yeah, I was going see through. Weird.

"I guess… I'm a little worn out. Like, I don't know where all of me is," I waved the flipper, and little drops of water fell off and onto the bank, rolled down, down, down to the river edge.

"Look, you take a break, go do your water thing or whatever it is. It was a long trip, and that croc didn't help," Riku paced a little at the edge of the river, turning to look up the bank. "I'll take a look around and see what I can find out."

" 'kay," I waved the flipper some more, and bigger drops fell off. Heheh, drip, drip, drip.

"I'll be back in a little bit," Riku said.

"Sure," I nodded. Drip, drip, drip…

"Hey," Riku's voice sounded really close by, and I jerked a little and looked at him. "I mean it, I'll be right back."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be here," I put my flipper down and slid backwards into the river. I let myself meld in with the waters, and gave up my form, my senses, my sight, my everything.

****

It's not like being part of the water was something new to me. I'd been part of it for so long now, that is was… natural. A part of me. Just, being water. I guess it used to be different. When I had a body, I never even thought of taking a water form, I mean, there was no use to it. I made water clones to fight for me and I made water spheres to attack with and I made water shoot around with barely a thought, but I did it all with my music. Without it… well, how was I supposed to use the water anymore? I guess I was using it anyway, in some sense. I was making it do stuff, like making it take a shape and sort of, possessing it so that it would do what I wanted it to. I couldn't actually make it do things, though. Not like before. Still, was I ever able to do it? I mean, just do it, just think and make the water do what I wanted? I needed something in between, something between me and the water, something that made it do what I wanted it to do. Something like, a translator. No, like, like a catalyst. An in-betweener.

I floated to the top of the water. I was feeling a bit better, I guess, but it was still kind of hard to focus on things. I didn't think I could have been all torn apart like that, that was kind of scary. If I got all torn apart and washed out and detached, would I lose myself? I thought I came pretty close to it already., and I seriously did not want that to happen. I wondered if Riku would find anything out; this world seemed pretty weird, turning people into animals and stuff. I wondered if I'd turn into an animal too? Well, I came in as an animal, so maybe it didn't change me because I was already an animal. Maybe it just changed bodies, though, and I really didn't have a body to change. Hm, changing people into animals, a wild river with crocodiles, and probably other wild animals too if Riku was turned into a leopard. Wild animals, river… plains, probably, because there weren't too many trees from what I'd seen. Something was starting to sort of click in my head, er, mind. Something about a wild savannah… and a lion that was a king too, and a monkey, baboon medicine man thing.

"Hey…"

I felt the sound waves ripple across the water, and headed towards the sound of Riku's voice. Wow. I wasn't expecting him back so quick. I formed into the sea turtle and pulled myself up to the edge of the water.

"You know what, I think I know what this place is," I said, looking at him. He raised an eyebrow and sat back on his leopard haunches.

"Yeah? Let's hear it," Riku sort of stretched his paws out, his claws coming out all shiny and sharp.

"Oh, wait, did you find out something?" Did I interrupt him, or, like stop him from saying something he wanted to say?

"You go first," He yawned all cat-like.

"Well, it's not a lot, but I know Xemnas had sent Larxene and Marluxia to… well, I guess here. He called it the "Pride Lands"," I laughed. "They came back all pissed off, something about hyenas biting them in the ass or something. Then Larxene was calling Marluxia a big bad kitten for like weeks after, she'd get him all riled up with that too. It was funny. But, yeah, well, they said there was a lion who was a… a king, and this monkey dude. There wasn't a lot of talk about it, and we didn't really go back there again."

"Heh, well they were right about the king thing," Riku's tail swished behind him. He looked off to the side. "Simba, the lion king, and the baboon is called Rafiki. I ran into some hyenas too, but they weren't looking for trouble. They were heading off somewhere, away from the river and the plains."

"Ra-fee-kee. Hahah, that's a funny name," I flicked my flippers. "You found out a lot."

"Well, what did you expect?" Riku grinned a feline grin. Those canines, they looked scary. They could bite right through my shell, probably. I shuddered involuntarily. I don't want to be eaten.

"Anyway, it seems like there's something going on here, something wrong," Riku's smile dropped, and he looked back across the plains. "We have to get to Pride Rock, that's where the lion king is."

"We do?" I frowned, as well as a sea turtle can. "You said we needed to go to Disney Castle."

"Now I'm saying we need to go to see this king," Riku turned a hard eyed gaze on me. Frea-ky, he was seriously scary as a leopard. He held my gaze for a moment, just long enough to see me start to squirm – hey, I'm not exactly Mr. Tough Guy over here, and besides, anyone would be squirming if a freaking leopard was looking at them like they were a piece of beef jerky. "There was an Ibis I talked to, it said we can follow the river upstream to get there. There's a place where a smaller stream breaks off and passes by Pride Rock."

"Fine," I pushed myself back into the water. "Fine. Whatever. Let's go."

"You're really moody, you know that?" Riku said as he jumped onto my back. I grunted and turned upstream.

"What about the crocodiles?" I asked, glancing around. Damn lizards, maybe they'd stay away. Maybe. Please. Please stay away.

"I'll handle them," Riku sounded all self-assured, damn him. I ducked my head under the water and listened to it for a while. I could feel how the current was flowing towards us; there were a few shapes in the water, but they weren't as big as the croc that had chased us and they didn't seem to be moving anywhere near us. I focused on swimming on through the water and paying attention to where we were going. Every now and then there'd be a sound of some animals running by the side of the river, but I wasn't paying much attention. I was paying really, really little attention. Actually, I wasn't paying attention at all.

I was so engrossed in not paying attention, I almost missed the turn off into the side branch. I wiggled my flippers and tried to take the turn without turning on the side too much.

"Almost missed that…" Riku said. I felt him stretch his paws on my shell, and I picked my head up out of the water to take a look around. The slopes to the river here were flatter, and I could see grassy plains stretching out to both sides. Just to the left of the branching we were swimming into was a really, really huge rock formation. Like, gigantic.

"Heh, yeah, lost in thought a bit," I watched a couple of zebra turn away from the river and bound up to meet the rest of their herd. Zebras were just awesome. Walking barcodes, heh. "Is that that Pride Rock thing you were talking about?"

"I think so. It's the biggest rock formation in the place." Riku shifted on my back. The waters of the branch were clearer than the main river, and they were a bit easier to swim through too, so it didn't take long before I was pulling around one last bend and nearing the part of the stream that pulled close to the large rock thing. The banks here were a lot flatter than the banks we had passed, and up ahead, among some bushes, there was a group of lions all gathered around a monkey – er, baboon, I guess? The baboon – oh, was that Ra-fee-kee? Heheh – was standing ankle deep in the water and he was shaking a hoodoo voodoo magic stick above a pile of leaves. Or maybe it was something that was in the pile of leaves.

"Whaddya think they're doing?" I asked, swimming closer. The lions didn't seem to notice us yet. There were five of them, a big guy lion with a huge mane and four smaller lionesses. One of the lionesses was standing closer to the big guy lion and looking with him down at the pile of leaves.

"Magic?" Riku sounded preoccupied. Great, that just spoke of awesome. "How fast can you swim?"

"Uh, I guess if I tried, I could go pretty fast. I think," I didn't think I liked the direction this was going.

"All right, swim a little closer to the bank, then swim past the baboon and pull closer to that other bank," I felt Riku tense up on my back. "Get ready to swim as fast as you can."

"Wait, wait, what is going on?" I swam closer to the bank anyway, I could feel his claws digging into my shell and that's just not cool.

"I'll explain later, now go!" Riku jumped off of my back and landed on the bank just as the lions noticed us. There was a burst of shocked voices, then a loud growl as the guy lion bounded towards Riku. Wow, huge lion against not so huge leopard? This was not looking good. I had no idea what Riku had in mind, but I don't think ending up lion chow was part of it. I pushed away from the bank and swam towards the monkey, baboon, whatever, so I could get around it and to the bank further on. The baboon had started walking out of the water towards the pile of leaves, but turned around when he noticed I was coming closer. Oh, great, he didn't look happy. He shook his magic stick and then swung it towards my head. Why, why did everyone try to hit me in the head? I ducked and swerved around him, trying to keep out of his reach. Riku was dodging around the lions on the bank, and hey, he was pretty good at the whole not-getting-eaten thing. Then, then he did this thing where he ran straight at the guy lion, and just as the guy lion sort of reared up to whack him, Riku dodged down and slid right past him. Slid. Right. Past him. Are leopards supposed to be able to do that? I almost forgot what I was supposed to be doing, but then that stupid baboon swung his stick at me and I didn't notice and he konked me on the head. Ow. Well, I guess an ow, it didn't really hurt, but it sort of sent my thoughts all flying. Then I remembered I was supposed to be getting near the bank again, but how the hell was I supposed to do that with a crazy baboon shrieking weird words at me that I didn't understand and waving a stick around?

Whatever. The baboon could whack me all it wanted, I just set my mind to ignoring it. This whole water thing is kind of weird, but it comes in handy like this. Like, all I have to do is stop focusing on whether or not something bothers me when it hits me, and bam, it doesn't bother me anymore. So I just plowed on by the baboon and pulled as close to the bank as I could without beaching myself, which wouldn't be cool since sea turtles are totally not good at moving outside of the water. Good thing I got there, Riku, after his super-slide-dodge thing, had jumped over one of the lionessesess (how many s's?) and started running straight towards the river. I had no idea what his plan was, get the lions mad and run away? Sounded like fun, though, buuuut... yeah, that wasn't it. He went straight for the pile of leaves, leaned over in mid-step, grabbed something in his mouth, and ran straight at me. Oh. Man. The lions went crazy! They just plowed down the beach, there were growls and roars and dirt was flying everywhere and Riku was running at me like he's running for his life, which he was, and the baboon was on my back. Crazy. Crazy.

Wait, why was the baboon on my back? I spun in the water, trying to get the stupid thing off of me – I know it was saying something to me, but I just couldn't understand.

"Sorry Mr. Baboon, but I really have no idea what you're saying," I stopped and spun in the other direction suddenly, even going all on my side and stuff. Damn thing wouldn't budge. "Like, your accent is really, really weird…"

Whatever. Riku was getting close, and the baboon was swinging its stick out towards him, so I stopped spinning and stuff and just dove down as quickly as I can. Mr. Baboon ended up at the surface of the water, splashing around, and I came up again. The river wasn't that deep, just a few feet, but enough to get the freaky monkey off of me. I barely surfaced when something heavy landed on my back, and I could hear harsh panting. Claws dug into my shell, and I turned away from the bank and started paddling for all I was worth. The water behind us was full of splashing and angry growls and roars and stuff and it was just chaos. Chaos and chaos and really big lions.

"Faster!" Riku hissed around… er, whatever he had in his mouth. I tried. I did. I could feel shapes in the water splashing closer in behind us. Not cool, I really did not need to add lion attack to my list of Things That Have Happened To Me That I Do Not Appreciate.

I swam towards the middle of the stream, where it was a little deeper and where I hoped the lions would be a little too scared to follow. Lions don't like water, right? Why are they swimming in it? What about all that stuff that I learned about cats, was it all wrong? Still, it looked like the deeper water was working, the lions were all wary and stuff about getting too far away from the banks. They roared and growled and yelled after us, and those phrases just weren't very nice. They weren't very nice at all.

"They're kind of rude, aren't they?" I said, tilting my head.

"You'd be kind of rude if someone stole your cub out from under your nose, too," Riku was still talking around whatever was in his mouth.

"Huh, guess I would." Yeah, if someone stole my cub from… "Cub?"

"Yeah."

"That's what you stole?"

"Yeah."

"You stole their baby?" That was my utter-shock voice. That was my voice of utter shock. "You… you're a baby stealer now!"

"Look, just focus on swimming, okay? And keep an eye out for crocs," Riku sat down heavily on my shell.

"What are you going to do with it? Eat it? Are you going to be a baby-eater too?"

"Yes, yes. I am going to eat the baby lion cub. That is my grand plan," Riku tensed his claws.

"Don't you get all… all… sarcastic on me!" I swam a little harder, trying to find a place to draw close to the bank. Dammit, first we had to get far, far away from the lions, and then get to a bank.

"As soon as you stop acting like an idiot," Riku growled a little. The cub, which I guessed was still held in Riku's mouth since I didn't feel it on my shell, wasn't making any noises. No sounds. No nothing. Was it still alive? Did its little back get all twisted and broken in the mad dash? Ugh, I hoped not. That'd just be horrible.

I stuck my head under water, it seemed to help a bit with trying to sort of connect with it and send my senses out, and tried to see if I can find anything in the water. The lions weren't there, at least they weren't anywhere near us, and I couldn't really feel anything in the water before us. A bit further down there was a place where the bank sloped pretty easy down to the water, and there were bushes all around it, so I swam up there and stopped on the bank. Riku jumped off and took a few steps away from the water before setting the cub down. He took a step back away from it and sat down, then gave me this look. Like, this weird look. I don't know what he wanted from me, but whatever.

I took at look at the cub. It… looked like a lion cub. All tawny brown colored and little with a little tail and these huge paws that were all too big for it and stuff. It was kind of cute, in a little itty bitty baby animal kind of way. It was pretty cool with being stolen away and carried off by leopard, though. Like, really cool with it, all just relaxing and chilling and stretching out its little paws and sitting on its little haunches and just looking at us.

"Hey kid, how's it going?" I asked it. The cub turned to look at me with huge eyes.

"It's okay." The cub sounded like a boy. "What're you gonna do to me?"

"Uh… I don't know," I looked at Riku. He was looking all lost in serious thought and stuff. Boring. "How about you just kick back for now?"

"Sure," The cub sort of looked around all bored like. I flicked my flippers a bit. The cub sat there. I stared at it some more. It looked over at a piece of grass. I looked at Riku.

"Riku? Like, what's going on?" I asked in a loud whisper. He looked over at me and grimaced, then picked himself up and walked over closer to me. The cub just sat there, staring at the piece of grass. Weird.

"That's not a lion cub," Riku whispered back, leaning in close to me.

"Uh, yeah it is," I looked at it; little lion body, big lion paws, itty bitty lion tail, all check. "At least, it looks like one."

"And you look like a sea turtle," Riku said dryly, then sighed all aggravated and stuff. "It looks like a lion cub, but it's just… something, taking the form of one. Look at it – it has no fears, no wants, no personality. We stole it from its parents, and it barely took notice."

"You think it's a… er, well, something like me?" I didn't like the sound of "we stole it", but I guess I did help after all.

"No, you can still have mood swings…"

"Hey!"

"This is something different. Some sort of raw energy, or something, taking on a physical form." Riku looked over at the cub, his tail twitching. "Not just a physical form, but a living physical form. It must be powerful."

"But… what is it?" I shifted a bit at the water's edge, and looked over at the cub. It lay down and put its head on its outstretched paws.

"If I knew, we wouldn't be sitting here staring at it," Riku muttered. Man, why were people always getting irritated at me? I looked at Riku.

"So, now what?"

"Now we – " Riku stopped, tensing up. I looked over where he was looking and saw that the cub had stood up, it's too-big-for-its-head ears pointed forward, and its head twisted to look over its shoulder at the bushes. It shook a little, like it got hit by something, then it whipped around and took off through a hole in the bushes. Riku shot up after it, but the bushes were pretty thick, and he got caught up in them.

"Hey, hey! Wait up, what…" I floundered at the edge of the water. What the hell was going on? What the HELL was going on?

"Go human!" Riku called back, and with a flash his Keyblade appeared in his teeth. He slashed through some of the bushes and ran off after the cub.

Awesome.

"Go human, he says. Go human. What if I don't want to go human, huh? What if I just want to sit here, all turtle-y and stuff?" I splashed the water with my flippers and glared after him. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. What if I couldn't even go human, with this crazy place changing people into animals and stuff? Ugh!

Whatever. I slid back into the water and let go of the sea turtle form. It kind of felt good to just relax into the water and not really have to focus on anything. The past few days were just freaking horrible, way too much action and work and everything, and now I had to go chasing after a freaking lion cub that wasn't a lion cub and a leopard that wasn't really a leopard. A Nobody that wasn't a Nobody anymore (was I?) chasing a not-leopard who was chasing a not-lion cub all through the African savannah (or wherever we were). I refocused and made a half-assed attempt to reform as a human, a very, very half-assed attempt, because let's face it, I didn't think it was going to work. Seriously. This place didn't let Riku stay, er, Riku, right? So why should it let me be, me?

Well, it did, which was just plain weird. Then I thought, wait a sec, it changed Riku, and Marluxia and Larxene, and what did they all have in common? Er, not much, but there was one thing they all had that I didn't. Well, that I didn't really have, not exactly, I mean, not like I had before. Because, let's face it, no matter how you slice it, this whole body thing I had going on wasn't really a body, right? It was just water all reshaped and stuff. So the world, it was looking for a body to change, a body that I didn't have. Huh. Funny.

I took a few steps away from the water, man was it weird walking on two legs again, and felt the tug at my leg that reminded me that the water had different ideas about me going out on dry land. Why. Why, why, why? I turned around and looked at it for a moment. Hey, gets me out of chasing down the crazy felines, so that's a-okay with me. Except that there were these yowls and growls and nasty sounds coming from somewhere beyond the bushes, and they didn't sound too happy. So… I needed water to contain my form, right, but why wasn't the water I had in my form enough already? Let's see… when I'd make my water clones, they'd take on the shape I needed them to and… ohhhhh, right, they'd have this pool of water following them around. Right. Dur. Why didn't I remember that?

I looked around and tried to find something I could put water in. If I could find something to put water in, I could take it with me, and like, have a water source. Or something. That should work. So, rock, rock, a blade of grass, another rock. Right. This was working out just great. Oh, oh, hey, wait a minute – I walked a few steps closer to one of the bushes, it looked like there was something round beneath the lower branches. I couldn't reach it like I was, the water was tugging at me kind of hard, but maybe if I lay down… Yeah, okay, I could lay down on the ground and just kind of try to reach it. My fingertips just barely touched it, but I couldn't get a hold on it. Dammit. I stretched my arms out a little more and managed to whack it with my fingers hard enough to make it shift. Well, whatever it was, it was hollow, which was a good thing. Hollow and round meant it could hold water. I reached out and whacked it again, and it ended up detaching from the bottom branches and skittering away a few feet. Great. Still, it looked like it would be closer to me, even if it was a bit to the side, so I sat up and scooted over a little bit. Yes! Success! I had a hollow… gourd thing. Whatever. Time for the real test.

I went back to the water and rinsed that gourd thing out really well, it was just nasty. Ew. Then I scooped up some water from a cleaner part of the river and stuck my hand in it. Okay. Then, I walked away from the river, backwards, to see if this was working. Well, well, well. Well. I'm awesome. No water thingy trying to drag me back in the water, nope, nada, just me and my gourd of watery awesomeness. I'm freaking rad. So, I turned away from the river and tried to figure out where the cats were. Judging from the crazy growls I was hearing, they were somewhere a little to my right, and ahead. I pushed aside the branches where Riku had slashed through them and found more bushes, with more marks of being all slashed apart, so I kept on going past branches and bushes and really dry and cracked up earth and man did I really have to keep my hand in the gourd? It was really annoying. Well, whatever. I'd figure that out later. The bushes were getting thinner and I passed under the chopped branches of a bush and stepped out onto a really, really dry plain place.

Just ahead of me was Riku, all leopardy and stuff, with his Keyblade in his teeth. He looked kind of worn out, his fur was all ruffled and he was crouching low to the ground breathing heavy and stuff. A little bit in front of him was… er, this huge, black four legged thing that sort of resembled a cat… thing. Maybe. It had huge glowy yellow eyes and its mouth was all orangey red when it opened it and it had red spikes all sticking out from its back, and, and it's tail was a snake. It was a snake tail, and it was purple striped and it had a yellow tongue and it just looked weird. Really weird. Heartless weird, only this didn't feel like a Heartless.

"Holy shit what is that?" I pointed at the thing with the one hand I didn't have in the gourd. Riku turned to look at me.

"Where the hell were you?" He growled. I fumbled with the gourd a bit, managed to catch it before it spilled, and held it out.

"The water thing, I couldn't get away from the river," I grinned. Riku let out this growl groan, probably because he'd just remembered that and felt all stupid for forgetting it. Heheh.

"Well, help me out now that you're here," Riku turned back towards the giant pseudo-kitty cat of doom. I balked.

"How? I don't exactly have anything to do my music thing on, do I?" I frowned, wishing I did. Just because, you know? Not like I'd be getting into this whole fight thing, but maybe I could provide background music or something, maybe play a nice little rhapsody while waiting for everything to finish.

"I don't need a song and dance number!" Riku growled again. He was growling a lot.

"Well, I'm sorry, but I can't help you then," I held the gourd closer and crossed my arms. "Song and dance numbers are just how I do things."

"Will you just help out here? Just, throw rocks at it or something!" Riku sounded really pissed. Everyone was always getting pissed off at me, what was their problem, really? The giant mutant cat thing spit out some fireball or something, and Riku jumped to the side to avoid it.

"Yeah, well… I really don't feel like it," I took a step back from the flames that were spreading from where the fireball hit. Eheheh, flames. I did not want to evaporate, that would totally suck.

"What – Listen. Listen, this thing and everything it symbolizes, poses a large problem to everything. Everything! That includes you," Riku had turned back around to face me, and wow he was pretty good, talking around the Keyblade like that.

"Oh, really? I didn't know that," I leaned over a little towards him and dropped my voice to a whisper. "Maybe, see, you can explain a little, how this could be a problem for me? You know, I might be more inclined to help out then…"

"No, I will not explain this to you," Riku stalked closer, all glaring at me. "There is no time to explain anything. Just… make yourself useful somehow!"

"See, that, you're not telling me things. You're all "let's go to Disney Castle because the worlds are all in trouble again blah blah blah" and I go along and I figure you're going to tell me what's going on but nooo, why should anyone tell Demyx what's going on? He doesn't need to know! Why do we need Kingdom Hearts? You'll find out when we finish -Why is there a target painted on my back? Don't worry about it, just keep doing what you always do. – Why are the lights out? That's just how you play the game!" The snake part of the cat-thing hissed and the cat-thing roared, all hot and nasty breath. I winced and took a few steps back. "See, the last time people didn't tell me everything I needed to know, I got my ass handed to me, and ended up disappearing for, what, years? That wasn't fun."

I looked down at Riku and straight in his eyes with the coldest and hardest and most glariest of glares I could manage, and man could I manage it, I was the deepest trench in the deepest ocean, I was all freezing water and 1-oh-8-point-6 megapascals of deep sea crazy.

"I will tell you everything," Riku said in a very controlled voice, "Everything I know, I'll tell you, but first, we need to take care of that thing."

"Well…" I lightened up on the glare; it was kind of tiring. "Better get to it fast, it doesn't look like it'll be sticking around for long."

"What?" Riku turned around to look at the cat thing. It was getting all wavery, and the black of it was seeping into the air around it. It kind of looked like it was bubbling too, its insides getting all distorted against its skin.

"Is this not good?" I asked, taking a few more steps back, just in case. Riku just stared at it for a long while. "Uh, this is probably not good, right?"

"This is not good." Riku affirmed. We both stared at the thing some more, which probably wasn't the smartest thing to be doing in the situation, but hey, it worked. The cat thing bubbled up, and then it sort of started bubbling… in? All the blackness of it was getting sucked in and in and it was all wrapping around itself and I was getting kind of dizzy from watching it. It sort of vanished into this one point, all giant black cat snakeness of it, and everything got really quiet all of a sudden. Riku was next to me, and I saw the fur on his back stand on end, all the way from his neck down to his tail, and this time – THIS time – I totally felt what he was talking about. The wrongness – the-not-supposed-to-be-ness. The whole gray-black swirly maestrom of doomy-doom-ness. Like, a solar eclipse in broad daylight, the tide rushing out just before the tsunami hits, that kind of wrong and doom.

And then… heheh, and then, well, black wasn't light, but I swear it was blinding all the same, it just came rushing out of nowhere, but really it was that little point where the cat thing had disappeared to. It came rushing and it was like… like ribbons of black just everywhere, and they were swirling around and twisting and there was wind just, just whipping everything everywhere. Bushes went flying and rocks were zipping past my head and I threw myself to the ground and hugged the gourd to my chest and Riku crouched down as low as he could get, and he was gritting the Keyblade tight in his teeth. The wind and the blackness were curling around that one spot, and inside there was a cloud thing forming, like, cloud of darkness. Dark darkness, I mean, I've been around my share of darkness – dark passages, and dark portals, and just plain dark worlds where darkness is all that's ever been there and all that's ever going to be there – but this was a different type of darkness, this was a level of darkness that I don't think even Xemnas could of thought up. Maybe. I mean, I'd never talked to him about it, so he might've. Still, this darkness was different, it was living, it was breathing, it had eyes, softly glowing amber orbs just sort of hovering in the cloud, right behind the ribbons of black, and when I looked into them I could tell they weren't just empty heartless eyes, or those apathetic eyes Nobodies wore, nope, they were real, they were intelligent and there were plots and schemes and all sorts of crazy things going on in those eyes.

The problem – ha, problem, like there's only one, right? – the problem was, this thing, this crazy black cloud glowy eyed thing, it looked at me too, and it knew me. I could feel it, you know? The way it looked at me, I could feel its gaze just go into me and just, know me. It knew who I was, it knew everything. And get this – it wasn't surprised. Like, I was supposed to be there, like it had known I was going to be there, right then. It knew, it knew all about me. It knew what I was, what I could do, what I was made of and what I could be. It knew about… It knew about it…

I could see it, I could see, it knew about it. It knew about –

It just looked at me, like, once, how could it know?

It knew it! It knew, it knew, it knew –

Those eyes, I didn't want them on me anymore. I didn't want them on me. I didn't want them looking at me and I didn't want them knowing me and I didn't want them – I didn't want them –

I shoved my hand to the bottom of the gourd – it wasn't panic! – and I let go, I just let go and splashed out and I didn't care if I ended up in the gourd all the way or if I ended spilling out and over the ground and soaking into it – would I lose myself then, would I disappear forever if I did? – I didn't care, it didn't matter, I didn't want those eyes on me, I didn't want those eyes knowing and weighing and judging I didn't need them –

I didn't –

I –


	5. Missed The Train To Mars

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

Oh I'll give ten cookies to whoever can figure out which parts of this chapter were the easiest for me to write. :D Seriously, ten awesome chocolate chip cookies. Who wants them? xD

I'm feeling a bit more in my element as this goes on, that's a good sign. I'm loving this.

Just a thing: Out of all of those involved in the fight against the Nobodies, I've always considered Riku as being the one who would be most able to empathize with them. Out of everyone on the side supporting light, he came the closest to losing his heart, he'd spent his time in darkness, and he'd understood just what that power holds in it. On the other side, I could never see Sora really empathizing with any of the Nobodies. He's a very Chaotic Good sort of character, he's really striving for what he believes is 'right', and while he is able to accept and forgive those who come to understand and join his own side, he shows little remorse for those who are stuck in the gray and aren't able to fully come into the light, because their belief of 'right' and 'wrong' have no place there.. The only exception would be Riku, although that is also made null and void due to Sora's constant belief that no matter what Riku (or darkness-possessed Riku, however you want to look at it) did, he was still Riku and Riku was a good person who know what 'right' was and would eventually come to see the light. Which he did, in a way.

That's all really essay material, but I'm just tossing it out there because it's been rolling around in my head for a while. Oh, and yeah, it kind of has something to do with what's going on.

Anyways, moving on! :D Read! Enjoy!

**Thanks to:**

Sweetkittens

The Seventh Horcrux

I really really appreciated the reviews! Thank you very much! And look at that, two reviews this time! :D I'm on FIRE.

**Review and the ferrets will love you forever!**

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**_Missed The Train To Mars_**  
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"_Morals are subjective, as are the concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' which derive from them." The claymore in the golden-eyed man's hands arced in a low circle, spikes glinting sharply in the lights of the practice room. It cleaved through the air just above the musician's head as the other man ducked and hopped back. "They are both created by societies based on mutual feelings of what is acceptable and what is not."_

_ The claymore cleaved the air again, slashing quick, and the musician, finding himself unable to move out of the way quickly enough, brought his instrument forward, spikes catching on spikes in a brilliant shower of sparks._

_ "Those feelings emanate from hearts, structures designed to collect and amplify and reflect the natural order of the universe, and transfer that order into the everyday lives of those populating it," The claymore was pulled away from the sitar sharply, the man bending his knees and sending his weapon jabbing forward just under the instrument's neck and below the other man's guard. The musician danced his fingers across the strings, water gathering under his boots and sliding him away to the side._

_ "Essentially, the morals of society are also the very structure of society itself, as dictated by the universe. By giving society morals, the universe also gives it order, and with it, a sense of purpose. Without order, there is anarchy, and where there is anarchy, there is a loss of purpose." The claymore was lifted high into the air, the golden eyes glinted. The musician watched warily, panting and clutching his sitar in shaking hands. _

_ "Without a heart, there is no purpose." The claymore came down again, a long slash sliding diagonal towards the musician's unprotected left leg. The sitar's strings rang out again in clear notes, and a small wall of water rose to meet the weapon. The claymore sliced through the shield, but the musician had taken a step back and it swung just short. _

_ "You have no purpose, you have no 'right' or 'wrong'," The golden-eyed man followed his weapon, stepping closer to the musician, and reversed his stroke quickly and fluidly. The heavy claymore connected, flat side smashing into the musician's arm and side and sending him tumbling across the floor, sitar following in a mad clatter. The golden-eyed man leapt after the other, claymore swinging low, as the musician scrambled to get his feet under him again._

_ "The only purpose you have is what the Organization gives you," The claymore connected with the musician's side again, sending him sliding across the ground. "The only 'right' and 'wrong' you have is what is outlined for you by the Organization."_

_ The musician reached out a hand to summon his sitar to him, but instead found himself kicked over onto his back by the golden-eyed man's boot, the same boot that then rested heavily on his chest, pressing down until he was struggling to pull breath into his lungs._

_ "You are not here because you were deemed worthy, and you are not here because there is a use for you," The boot pressed even harder onto the musician's ribcage, constricting his breathing until he could only gasp, his throat burning from the strain. "You are here merely because there is no place else for you to be." _

_ The claymore came around, hung with its deadly spikes inches away from the musician's widened eyes. Hands clutched at the boot, fingers curling desperately, as the golden-eyed man swung the claymore slightly, like a very large, very heavy pendulum, before letting the claymore drop. The weapon crashed to the floor, main spike embedding itself firmly into the tiles. A small cut on the musician's face beaded burnt-maroon, thickened and dripped a near-black trail along his cheek. The golden-eyed man smiled, feral and humorless._

_ "Without us, you are nothing."_

****

Someone was screaming. I could hear it, just scream and scream and scream. It was sort of endless, it just kept going, and yeah it got a little quieter for a while but then it picked up and got louder again. I couldn't tell if it was a guy or a girl, just that they were screaming because they were in pain and they were dying, they're dying, but it wasn't like they were dying now, but like they were dying forever. They're dying forever and forever and they know it and that's why they were screaming, because that was the only thing keeping them from focusing on the pain, because that was going to be around forever too.

I drifted to the surface. I didn't want to, not really. I was feeling all sluggish and not cool and I really didn't want to see the sun right now, but I guess I had to. Or should. Or something. I wasn't thinking about the weird eyed vortex and I wasn't thinking about having run away, again - _again_. I was just floating on up to the surface and the closer I got the farther away the scream faded, and then it was just a buzzing sort of thing in the back of my mind, and I was forming up out of the water on the edge of the river, and Riku was sitting there, all leopard still, yeah, and just staring at me. He looked tired. I felt tired. I shouldn't have been feeling at all.

"Hey," I grinned and sat there cross-legged in the water. He flicked his tail and sighed.

"It's been three days," His voice is all low and murmur-like and he walked a little closer to me and stared at me, hard. "I wasn't sure you were even in that gourd."

"But you took the chance anyway? Man, thanks, I appreciate that," I said, putting one hand on my chest. If I had a heart, I might even mean it, which I actually sort of did, anyway. Riku just sat down and flicked his leopard tail again. Then it got silent, like, awkward silent, and for a really, really long time. It just dragged and dragged, and I dropped my hands to my knees and tried to think of a catchy tune to play in my head and Riku just stared out over the river a bit and it was just not cool.

"Uh…" I didn't know what to say, and then I said it anyway, but I don't think that's what I had wanted to say. "It looked at me."

Riku didn't say anything, but the awkwardness just got even worse, and the air was sort of weird, and I could see him tense up.

"Did it look at you?" I wasn't even paying attention to what I was saying anymore, the words were just tumbling a bit, just spilling out, but only a little. A little.

"Yeah…" Riku answered, his voice low and his eyes sort of narrowing and getting a little distant. He clenched his paws and his claws stuck out and dug into the dirt of the river bank. I fidgeted with my coat a little, biting my lip to keep from saying anything more, but that didn't work. That never worked.

"Kind of weird, huh? The way it just – _looked_ – you know? Like it knew you?" I was babbling. Wow, what a surprise. "Did you get that too, that feeling it was kind of expecting you? Like… like it was expecting you, because it knew you all inside out and stuff –"

"We have to go," Riku interrupted suddenly, turning to look at me. His eyes were cool but it didn't change the whole shaken-up look he had. Well, I guess I wasn't the only one, but I wasn't shaken up. I mean, not anymore. I wasn't.

"Yeah…" I clenched my hands together and sort of looked at him and sort of didn't. Funny. My knees were shaking.

"Yeah." Riku stood up and looked at the river again. "Do you think this branching leads back to the ocean?"

I flowed into the water, then back into the sea turtle shape and stuck my head up out of the water.

"Only one way to find out."

****

Had I ever mentioned how huge the ocean was? I think I did, quite eloquently as well (yeah, I stole that word from Luxord, so sue me). Still, I repeat: this ocean? It's freaking huge. Gigantic. So, I guess it's not that surprising we messed up directions the first time around and ended up in freaking lion land instead of Disney Castle. At least, that's what we decided once we got out on the big ol' sea again (and by 'we', I mean 'Riku', because apparently he doesn't like admitting his mistakes). So we were swimming the ocean again, er, I was swimming the ocean again, and Riku was trying his best not to freeze.

"Next w-world we get t-t-to, I'm buying a coat. A t-thick, furry c-coat." Riku stuttered, shaking up there on the back of my shell.

"You could get a tent!" I said, trying to keep to the direction Riku had pointed out for me as well as I could – the currents were killer in this part of the ocean. "Then – then! – you could pitch a tent. You know. Instead of pitching a fit. A… a tent."

The silence was deafening.

"That was horrible." Riku muttered.

"Yeah, I know," I sighed and fixed my direction again. Stupid currents. The deeper ones weren't all wacky as these, and really, there shouldn't be currents this strong at the top anyway. Like, they were all trying to avoid something, or something. Hm. Avoiding something? Could it be? I sent out feelers ahead of me with the currents, and yeah, there was something there. Something huge, huger than lion world. Maybe Riku was right this time, and Disney Castle was ahead of us?

"All right!" I pulled my head up out of the water, wow, I didn't realize I'd stuck it down there in the first place. "Good news!"

"Yeah?" Riku shifted on my back.

"There's something really huge ahead of us, somewhere in the general, er, vicinity of where we're going," I said.

"Great," Riku sounded a bit relieved. And cold.

"Bad news…" I kept going, shifting the angle of my flippers to catch a current. It wasn't exactly going where we wanted to, but it was the closest I could find and I was getting bored with paddling.

"There's always b-bad news," Riku muttered and sighed all aggravated.

"It's kind of a ways off," I turned my head, but I couldn't exactly look up on my shell too easily.

"How far?" Riku asked. I felt him shift again, and there was a rustle of paper. He was probably pulling the star map thing out again.

"Er, farther than it was to lion land. A bit," I tried to gauge the distance, but… yeah. That's all I got.

"That's just wonderful," Riku almost sort of groaned. I swam on. And on, and on and on and my mind started wandering, all through different memories and songs and stuff. I'm not good with the memory thing, things always seem so muddled and mushed together and chopped up into pieces. Each time I try to grab something it starts slipping away, and it's almost easier to just let them flow around and pop into mind in the middle of a song I'm starting to think of and disappear just as soon after that. I didn't even know what I was remembering sometimes, just images and pictures or voices coming and going. The louder ones, the clearer pictures and the sharper voices were all from the Organization, and the quieter ones… I didn't listen too hard to the quiet ones, I'd let them go back to wherever they came from without bothering them. The loud ones though, the loud ones and sharp ones and clear ones, those I tried to keep around as long as I could. If I didn't try too hard, if I just sort of grabbed at them from the corner of my mind, I could keep them from slipping away too fast. They were a different sort of thing than just regular remembering, then just thinking back and going "oh yeah, that's how it was", they were real memories. Like, I don't know. There wasn't a way to explain it. It's just, when Xigbar talked, it was like he was there, and when Axel's chakram flew by it was like it really was singeing my nose –er, snout, I guess, in this case. _"You think too much, you make a horrible philosopher."_ Zexion was just weird; I didn't even remember well what I was doing – no, wait, I was out on one of the outdoor landings, just chilling and looking up at the sky and stuff and he'd just come up the stairs and said his thing and went on and I had no clue what he was talking about. I still didn't.

"Hey, d-do you see t-that?" Riku spoke up suddenly; he sounded like he was really trying hard to talk. Oh man, how long were we out here? I totally lost track of time, not like I was good at it anyway, but still. At least he wasn't frozen.

"What?" I shook my head a bit, the little flitting snips of memories and songs were having a hard time leaving me alone. I looked out ahead of us and there was nothing, but then there was something. It sort of flickered a bit, like if you looked at it head on you couldn't see anything but if you looked a bit off to the side you could just barely see it. Just, barely. "Oh, yeah… yeah, that's the thing. That's it! Hey, I think we made it."

"Great. Wonderful. L-let's get i-in there," Riku was shuddering quite a bit, I could actually feel him shaking against my shell. Awww man, not good. I pushed off harder with my flippers and tried to speed up against the crazy currents there. Man, were they crazy – something did not want to let anything get into that world.

"Really tough going here," I said, straining against water that was trying to sweep me away from the world. "Something really doesn't want anyone getting in."

"M-must be a b-barrier." Riku stuttered, shifting on my back again. "Let me try something."

There was a sound, like metal on metal or something, and I saw a little glimmer of purplish cloud just above my head. I twisted my turtle-y head around and saw that Riku had gotten out his Keyblade and was holding it out in front of us. A soft purple glow surrounded it, really soft, like barely there really, but it stretched out and out and the I turned my head back around and saw the barrier ahead of us shimmering too, sort of shaking. The water around me, all nasty and stuff, started calming down. It wasn't going towards the world or anything, but it wasn't trying to tear me in half for trying to get past it anymore either.

"Something's working," I said, and started pushing forward even harder. The barrier ahead of us started to come into view even more, a really huge shimmering wall, and we were getting close to it pretty quick. The glow from Riku's Keyblade grew brighter, and just as we neared the barrier, a sliver of light stretched up from its bottom, and widened, and there was a door. Right ahead of us.

"That thing is pretty cool," I said, swimming in past the barrier.

"Yeah, c-comes in handy sometimes," Riku sounded sort of amused, I think the whole Keyblade working to open a door thing cheered him up a little, or something.

Well, we were past the door, but I wasn't really seeing anything except a murky sort of half-light, then the door behind us closed back up and the half-light lit up.

By lit-up, I mean totally freaking shone like the sun was in your face. I was blind, literally, I could not see, for like a minute. Or five. I just couldn't see, so I closed my eyes, but I couldn't really feel the water or currents or whatever, it was so freaking weird, like I was disconnected and stuff.

"Keep moving straight ahead," Riku said. I struggled with swimming, feeling all disoriented and stuff. "Just like you're facing, just keep going."

"What the hell is going on? I can't see anything," I whimpered, it's true. This was freaky. Freaky.

"It looks like another barrier, a barrier of light." Riku said. He didn't sound worried at all. At. All.

"Well gee, that's just freaking awesome." I swam forward, eyes shut against the light but I swore I could still see the blinding glaringness of it.

"You're almost through it," Riku sounded better than he had outside on the ocean, a little more alive and stuff.

"You can see it?" I asked, trying to figure out where up and down were.

"Yeah, it doesn't affect those with…" Riku trailed off. With? With what? With…? Oh. OH. I splashed my fins.

"With hearts, right? It doesn't affect those with hearts?" Oooh, what a nasty trick. Nasty trick. "You know what that is? That is discrimination. That… that is severely discriminatory. Severely. Extremely. It's just not cool at all."

"We're almost through it," Riku's voice was a little quieter. Whatever. Stupid barrier of stupid light reacting to stupid hearts and stupid stuff like that. I pushed on in whatever direction forward was and felt the edge of the barrier slip across me.

****

"It'd be easier if you could change your clothes," Riku hissed at me in a whisper. I glared at him. We were both crouching behind a wall of water barrels standing at the side of a house in Disney Town. Disney Town was stupid and I didn't like it, there were animal people and they talked funny and I couldn't walk around because apparently my clothes weren't cool enough or whatever.

"Listen, they will take one look at you and they'll know who you are," Riku balled his hands into fists on his knees. "It's been years and everyone's been talking about the Organization. Even people on Destiny Island's know what Organization members looked like, and know what they stood for. The stories got around, people _know_."

Okay, and there was that whole thing too. Whatever. I didn't care. I crossed my arms and stared at him evenly. Riku threw his hands up.

"All right. You can't do it. That's fine," He sighed in an aggravated sort of way and dropped his arms to his knees. Pffft. Can't do it. Of course I could do it, I just didn't want to. Duh. I could so totally change the clothes I was wearing, I mean, it was so easy, it wasn't worth the effort, you know? So totally easy.

"I could do it," I tapped my fingers along my arm. Riku looked at me. Our eyes met and I wasn't going to blink and he wasn't either and it was just a long, long staring match.

"Then do it," Riku growled.

"No," I retorted.

"Why not?" Ooh, his patience seemed to be disappearing rapidly.

"Because I don't feel like it," I shot back, snarky and all that jazz.

"You don't feel at all!"

Bastard. _Bastard_. He drags me along on his stupid little adventure to save the world, doesn't tell me anything that's going on or why I have to be there or why we're going out world hopping in the first place, goes around telling me what to do like I'm some sort of dog or something, and he's constantly reminding – he doesn't have to – he doesn't have to keep reminding me – !

I shoved him and he grabbed my arms and we both ending up tumbling over and I was trying to kick him and he was shoving at me and I think he was trying to kick me too and there might have been a punch here and there and I really didn't care, I just wanted to rip his stupid head off – I'd bite him if I got close enough, I would, I so would. I grabbed at his shirt and pushed him into the ground but he twisted around and got out of my grip and shoved me off of him and was on his feet before I could turn around and stand up myself.

"Fine! Either you can do it, and you won't because you're stupid, or you can't and you won't admit it, in which case you're also stupid," He wiped some dirt off of his cheek and looked at me with a grin that wasn't a grin but a sneer in disguise. I hated that look, that was the same look Axel had after those stupid partner missions we'd had to go on – _"Great job waterboy, you reeeeeaaallly applied yourself this time."_

"I got where I needed to go, so that's fine. You can do whatever you want, I really don't care anymore," That last part was tossed over his shoulder as he turned around and stalked off past the barrels.

Wait.

Wait.

I stared at the space between the barrels and the wall of the second house, just stared at it, and it was probably a while before it really hit me that he wasn't coming back. I mean, he was gone, totally gone. I started to stand, then realized that someone could see me if I did, the barrel wall wasn't that high, it was more like a barrel fence, really. So, I scooted over on my hands and knees instead, pressed up against the barrels and peeked beyond them. Cobblestone street, cheery houses. A horse on two legs. A… a horse. On two legs. It was like that dog and duck that followed that Sora kid around, only… a horse. I wasn't prepared for this kind of animal weirdness, I really wasn't. Houses, street, freaky ass horse, and no Riku.

I turned around and slumped back against the barrels. Dragged around the worlds, told what to do all the time, then dropped as soon as the usefulness all wore out. Hello world, welcome to my life. Half-life. Un-life. Whatever. Well, I guess I had a hand in it too, I mean, I could have handled things a little different. Or something. Or… I don't know.

_You don't feel at all_

I frowned, I grimaced, that was more like it.

"I do," I could barely hear myself, but I could tell my voice was wavering anyway. "I _do_."

I felt something. I was feeling something. Something was being felt, it had to. I had to. I did, didn't I? Didn't I feel? I didn't like this train of thought, I needed to change it before I got all caught up and stuck in it.

I looked down at my hands. Black gloves. Black coat. Black pants, black boots, black everything. I was a part of the Organization – I was a part of the _Organization_, but where was the Organization? It was gone. It didn't exist – exist! – anymore. Did I exist anymore?

Was this train of thought any better?

I bit my lip, picked at a sleeve. I was a part of the Organization, I had a purpose. My purpose was to find hearts to collect, our purpose was to find hearts to collect, to open Kingdom Hearts, to find our hearts, to find hearts that would be ours, to get them back – _get them back_ – that was the purpose, that was our purpose and my purpose but the Organization was dead and buried and the purpose was as well so where did that leave me? What was my purpose? What was my purpose, coat? Boots? Do you know? Tell me, what am I supposed to do now? What am I supposed to do?

The coat sure as hell didn't respond, and the boots had nothing to say either. Everyone was silent and I shuddered and pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I wasn't going to fall apart because I wasn't sure I could pick myself up and put myself back together again. I shuddered again and then again and I dug my fingers into the fabric of my pants and shoved my face against my knees.

"I have a purpose… I have a purpose…"

I had to, I had to have a purpose.

A new purpose, a better one.

A purpose, just for me, was out there. Somewhere.

I just needed to find it.

Or maybe I just needed to wait and hope and pray that it found me.

****

It was twilight. I'd been in The World That Never Was for so long that I had forgotten what twilight looked like. Funny. Axel and Roxas used to go out to watch the sun set and stuff, but they'd never ask anyone along. Whatever. It was their thing. Everyone had their thing, I guess. My thing… I didn't know what my thing was, or maybe I just wasn't remembering it. At the moment, my thing was counting the drops drip from the corner of the gutter into the puddle below as the afternoon drizzle dragged on into the coming night. One-thousand-two-hundred-eighty-six, but I might have missed a few. The drizzle felt weird against me – I'd dropped the whole make-myself-feel-things-touching-me thing but I could still feel the drops hitting against me, my face, my body, my hair, and sort of swirling around and drifting deeper in and just mingling all slurry like and stuff. I felt listless.

Then there was no drizzle on me. I kept staring ahead at the drops falling from the gutter, it was getting close to one-thousand-three-hundred and I wanted to make sure I caught every drop as it fell.

"Hey."  
I turned my head to the side. I hadn't noticed, but Riku was back and he was sitting next to me with his back to the barrels. He had an umbrella over both of our heads. The drizzle didn't bother me so I it didn't really matter to me but I guess it mattered to him.

"Here." Riku held something out to me, a tear-drop shaped bag with a cork at the narrow end and a strap. "A water bag. I figured it'd be better than that gourd."

I looked at it for a moment, but didn't move, and he put it on the ground between us. For a long while it was quiet. And drippy. I started counting the gutter drops again and got to fifty-seven before Riku talked again.

"You can't change your clothes, can you?" He asked. My eyes dropped to the puddle on the ground that the drops were falling into. It swirled a little and was flowing past a few cobblestones to a grate in the middle of the alleyway. I shook my head.

"You should have said something," He sounded annoyed. I heard him start to say something again, then stop. He did it a few times, but I didn't look at him. I watched the water flow between the cobblestones.

"It's all right, it doesn't matter," I said finally, tilting my head and looking up at the drippy gutter again. I paused a moment, tightening my arms around my knees. "You don't need me anymore."

More silence. Then something got tossed onto my head. I stared at the dark blue material in front of my eyes for a long moment. What?

"Put it on," Riku said.

"What is this?" I asked, all muffled by the fabric. I reached up and pulled it off of my head.

"A poncho," Riku sighed, giving me critical look. "It'll look stupid, but it should get you to the castle without a problem. Almost everyone's gone inside because of the rain."

"A poncho?" I was not new to the ideas of ponchos. A long piece of material with a hole in it, that was a poncho. Right?

"There's a hole," Riku supplied helpfully.

"Yes, I can see," I did see the hole, I just… how was I supposed to hold this thing? I messed around with it a bit.

"You put your head through the hole," Riku continued and I swear he was holding back chuckles.

"I know what to do with it," I grumbled. And he laughed. He laughed. I gave him a nasty look but he just grinned and swung the umbrella back up to keep the drizzle off of our heads. I managed to pull the damn poncho thing on and Riku was right, it looked so freaking stupid. It looked horrible. I decided that I didn't like ponchos, and I was glad that there supposedly wasn't a lot of people outside because I'd be mortified if anyone saw me like this.

"This is better…" Riku just barely breathed it, and I almost missed it as I fumbled some more with the stupid poncho.

"What? What is?" I stopped mucking around with it and looked over at the water bag.

"Nothing." Riku said. I shrugged, picked up the bag and looked it over. Good quality canvas waterproof bag. I pulled the rubber cork out and looked inside. Lots of water, lots of fresh water. Fresh water was good. I put the cork back in and saw there was a tiny hole in it. Hmmm… yup, water could move through it. Awesome. I slung the bag around my shoulder and looked at Riku. He raised an eyebrow.

"Ready?" He asked. I grinned.

"Yeah."

"Let's go."

****

Disney Castle was huge. Well, all right, it wasn't anything near as huge as The Castle That Never Was, and it wasn't anything as cool, at all (and no I was so not biased) but it was pretty big, and pretty nice, I guess. It had super high walls and apparently no fear that anyone was going to break in because even though it was getting later on in the evening the gate was opened wide and the guard at the front just nodded to Riku and me as we walked past. Huh, the poncho was working. Stupid poncho. I tugged at it, but that didn't make it look any better, and dammit I swear Riku was trying not to laugh. Bastard. He's the one who gave it to me.

"Hey, were you ever here before?" I asked as Riku led the way down a corridor.

"No," He said, then looked at me."Why?"

"You're sort of walking around like you know the place," I said, looking up at the walls. They were slick white and carved and decorated really nice.

"It's a castle," Riku shrugged, as if that explained it. Then, we stepped out into the courtyard.

Wow. It was so green. It was green everywhere, plants where growing like crazy and – and – there was a plant castle. In the middle of the courtyard there was a castle and it was made out of shrubberies and it was standing on a shrubbery covered planet shaped thing and there was a moon and stars and a sun made out of flowers all around it. These huge bushes were shaped into, er, awesome, animal people with trumpets and drums and stuff. An animal person shrubbery band. Oh, and had I mentioned they were huge? There were so many flowers and plants and stuff, the place would've given Marluxia palpitations. Palpi- yeah, palpitations. The good kind, he'd get all fluttery and stuff, seriously. It was pretty cool.

"Wow," I said. I had the ability to be very verbal when I wanted to be. "Wow."

"Yeah," Riku said, looking around. I looked at the nearest huge shrubbery, it was a giant cow on two feet with a trombone. Heh. "I wonder who's in charge with the upkeep."

I chuckled, and we headed on through the courtyard, passing by the castle on the flower planet and heading towards a farther doorway. There were lights on in the upper windows, and the sky was turning a nice shade of violet above the blue shingled castle turrets. We headed inside again, footsteps echoing down the corridor. It was kind of empty for a castle, I was expecting servants, or maybe someone bustling around, I mean, anything, but nope. Nothing. No one. Just us.

"So, where do you think the mouse is?" I asked. There were large paintings hanging on the walls and there were statues at even distances along the wall.

"The King," Riku corrected, giving me a hard look.

"Right, right. Sorry, I forget it sometimes," I grinned, and Riku gave me a look. King, King. Remember it.

"Forget? You're in his castle," Riku smirked and turned into the next corridor. I followed a few steps behind him, passing close by a suit of armor that looked like it was made for a dog person. It had a long snout and even a little tail guard in back. Weird, but cool too.

"Oh, hello, can I help you?" A voice spoke out suddenly, high pitched but not shrill. It was kind of pleasant actually. I turned to look over Riku's shoulder towards the source and found myself looking at a shortish mouse person in a pink and rose colored gown. Hmmm, this could be…?

"Good Evening, Queen Minnie," Riku said, giving her a slight bow. "My name is Riku, I had traveled with King Mickey a few years ago…"

"Oh!" The Queen exclaimed, and picked up her gown just slightly so the edge didn't drag on the ground, and stepped forward in a quick walk. "Oh, yes, Riku! I thought you looked familiar. You look just as Mickey described you."

She looked happy, that was a good sign. I hung back a bit, no need to bring attention to myself, at least, not any more than the poncho brought. Still, I guess I didn't do as good a job as I thought, because the Queen leaned over a little and looked past Riku and straight at me.

"Oh, who is that?" The Queen asked, taking a step to the side to look at me better. I gripped the poncho uncertainly and wondered what would happen if she remembered the Organization. Would that be a problem? That could be a problem, right?

"That's my friend," Riku said. I grinned at the Queen.

Wait, wait, what? Who? Who were we talking about? I almost turned around to look behind me, but then, oh. Oh, all right, is that what we're going with to keep the suspicion down? I could do that. That makes sense. I took a step forward and I was going to do the little bow thing, I was, really, because that's what you do around royalty, right? I didn't get that far though.

"Hey! I know you…"

Oh. Oh no. I knew that voice, I knew that muddled mushed together barely able to be understood voice. I knew that voice, and I did not like it. Bad memories. Bad, bad memories. There was a slapping of feet in the adjacent hallway, and I turned around to find a really, really pissed off big white duck in a blue mage uniform thing running straight at me and waving a staff around like it was a lasso. I took a step back, what the hell?

"Donald, wait!"

The air around me turned white and for a second I couldn't breathe and –

-

-

_Don't step in the water! Just stay out-_

-

-

_What do you mean, he's-_

-

-

I could feel myself again. Like, know where I was. Funny, I hadn't noticed when I lost hold of myself. Oh, wait. Wait, I know what happened. Damn duck, bastard used thunder on me. Thunder. Damn. It. I grabbed ahold of myself and felt for the edges of the pool of water. Well, at least I hadn't splattered out too far. I was having a hard time gripping the edges anyway, though, my mind couldn't focus all too well. There was noise and background shuffling and for a few seconds the scream broke through again but I ignored it and it faded away and it was just white noise and snow in my mind. I pulled myself together –

_That's my friend_

- and fell apart again just as quick. Dammit, I braced myself and gave a pull and managed to hold on to all of me, finally. The water seemed slippery, or maybe I was the one slippery. Stupid duck. I formed anyway, wavering and all shaky but I managed to get myself into shape again, kneeling on the corridor floor. Except, without the poncho. Where was my poncho? I looked around, oh hey I could see again, and there was that stupid duck, looking all pissed off, and there was that giant freaky dog thing, and there was Queen Minnie, and Riku. Riku was standing in front of me and giving me a curious look. He said something, but I couldn't hear him all that well, it was like he was talking from real far away and I was way, way under the water. I shook my head and the white noise receded a bit, and regular sounds started coming in again.

"All right now?" Riku asked. I stared at him blankly. Oh, wait, he's talking to me.

"Yeah…" I said. Or tried to say. It came out more like "Erbffrhh…"

Riku raised an eyebrow and looked at me curiously, Queen Minnie put her hands to her mouth, and I tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Wait, wait, it was coming to me. Thunder. All electricity and stuff, and the whole weird moment of detachedness that it threw me into, it must have done something to my ability to control the water, and with my water control all muddled up, I couldn't make my water body do the whole talking thing. Oh, that was not cool. That was not cool at all, this better not be permanent. I clenched my fists tight and glared at the duck – _glared_ at the stupid duck. It let out a surprised little yelp, then stared right back at me and glared. Oh, oooo, stupid duck. You stupid bastard duck, you are going to drown, I am going to drown you, because you are a duck and you go swimming in water and you will go and swim in the water and I will be there and I will drag you under and I will hold you there at the bottom and I will watch all the little bubbles come out of your stupid duck mouth and I won't let you go until they're all gone.

"Gee, Donald, I think you broke him," The tall dog thing said in a loud whisper. I turned to glare at him. He was holding the water bag. He was holding it. I scrambled to my feet, how I don't know because they weren't working all that correctly but I did it, and pulled that bag right out from the dog's arms. I took a few steps back but my knees were all wobbly, and I ended up falling on my ass. Awesome. Whatever, the bag was doing its job, there was a thin line of water running out of the rubber cork and to… er, me.

"Do you remember who that is?" The duck said to the dog, all spitty. The dog scratched his head and smiled at it brightly.

"Well, sure Donald. That's the Organization member we fought in Hollow Bastion with Sora," The dog dropped his arms to his sides.

"That's right, an Organization member. He's supposed to be gone, so what is he doing here?" The duck crossed his arms across his chest and turned to glare at me. I glared right back at him. Ooh, another glaring match. Fine duck, bring it. As long as you keep your magic out of it, I could so take you. Yeah. I could glare for ages, because technically I don't ever have to blink, ever.

"Well, he's here with Riku, and I'm sure there's a good reason for it," The dog nodded all solemnly and stuff. Well, at least someone around here had their head on straight, more or less.

"There is, but first, I need to speak to the King," Riku said, turning to look at Queen Minnie. Everyone suddenly got a lot less cheerful than they were, and I didn't all too much like the drop in their faces. Not a good sign, you know?

"Riku…" The Queen started, then stopped. She looked at him. "We are going to have a lot to discuss. Come with me to the King's study, we can talk there."

The Queen turned around and started leading the way. The duck and the dog started to follow her, and I looked after them, still clutching the water bag to my chest. Riku walked over to me and held out his hand to help me up, but I wavered.

"Come on, no one's going to be throwing any more lightning bolts at you, promise," He grinned. I snorted and reached out to grab his hand and pull myself up. "Think you can make it, or do you want me to find you some crutches?"

"Fbbgugh err," I said, which wasn't the nicest of things to say normally and didn't sound all too well in weird-messed-up-language either.

"Can you repeat that? I'm not sure I caught it…" Riku grinned. Smartass. I followed him down the corridor, trying not to wobble too much, and we headed after the Queen.


	6. Goodbye Blue Sky

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

I laughed quite a few times during this chapter. Quite a few times. Mmhmm…

I don't really know – reactions and actions, when writing Demyx, are an interesting thing. Fleeting, happening and then not happening anymore. He's an interesting creature in his current state – what is it sustaining him? I guess we'll find out.

**Thanks to:**

The Seventh Horcrux – Much love to you!

**Reviews are like candy for the soul!**

* * *

_Goodbye Blue Sky

* * *

_

The King's study was a pretty cool place. There was this huge carved wooden desk with a plush burgundy chair standing behind it, and there was a huge painting of the King's seal (I guess that's what it was) hanging on the wall behind it. The sides of the room were all bookcases set into the walls, with tons and tons of books on them. Everyone filed in and the door was closed behind us. Queen Minnie went to stand by the desk, and the duck and dog stood over on one side of the room. The duck was still shooting me nasty looks, but I ignored it and walked over to the bookcase on the other side. Books. I loved books! Books were awesome, especially books with pictures in them. No, not… not like picture books, that's just stupid, I mean, like, books with pictures and, and diagrams and stuff in them .That kind of thing.

I started looking over the spines of the books, trying to see if anything caught my eye. I'm sure that there'd be tons of interesting stuff in the King's study, he was a King, after all, and they had cool stuff.

"Did something happen?" Riku asked, and I looked away from the books to glance over at everyone else. The Queen folded her hands in front of her and looked sad, real sad.

"Well, Riku, just about… just about half a year ago, Mickey came to find me, all flustered and agitated about something," The Queen frowned in thought. "He tried to explain to me quickly what was going on, but he didn't have much time. He said something about a great darkness rising up to endanger the worlds, and that the Keyblades were needed again. He wasn't very sure himself what the cause of it was. He'd contacted Master Yen Sid about it, and all they could agree on was that something – something very dangerous – was moving through the worlds."

The Queen paused for a moment and looked over at the duck and dog. Everyone was all tense, which was totally not a good sense. Tenseness means something bad was either going to happen, or had happened, and I did not like being anywhere where something bad might happen. I didn't. I just had the most awesome of bad luck and just caught up in these things.

"We helped Micky set up barriers around our world, to keep that, that darkness from getting inside, and Micky left through a highly protected portal down in the lower parts of the castle. When he left, he said… he said he was going to find you and Sora," Queen Minnie looked at Riku sadly, and I saw a confused look cross his face. Oh, that wasn't good. I'm pretty sure that if Mr. Mouse King was at Destiny Islands, Riku wouldn't be world-hopping trying to find him.

"The King wasn't at Destiny Islands." Riku said, crossing his arms. Queen Minnie nodded sadly, and the duck and dog let out a sigh. Riku looked at them all again. "Did he say anything else, about where he was going, or what he was going to do?"

"He didn't say much, but he mentioned a name…" Queen Minnie put a finger to her lips, thinking for a moment. "It was, it was The Land of Departure. I remember it, because Mickey had said that he had trained there many years ago, when the Keyblade had first come to him. I'm not sure what type of world it is."

"That sounds familiar," I said, thinking on it. Riku turned to me, one eyebrow raised.

"I _almost_ understood that," He almost grinned. I grimaced.

"I said, that sounds familiar," I tried again, and hey I think I was talking better. "Oh, I think it's coming back. Is it coming back?"

"Yeah, unfortunately," Riku smirked. I glared at him. "Familiar?"

"I… heard that name before." I knew I heard it before, it had something to do with… Ugh, I know Xigbar mentioned it a few times, but he never really said too much about it, usually because Saix would pop up out of nowhere whenever he'd start talking about it. "It popped up a few times when we were talking about the Keyblades, I think… hm, I think someone had said something about Keyblades being there, or gathering there, or… something like that."

"The Land of Departure," Riku said quietly, eyes getting a distant look in them. He turned back to the Queen. "The portal, do you know where it leads?"

The Queen shook her head, and turned to look at the duck and dog, but they shook their heads too. Figures, no one knows. Riku turned to look at me, a really curious look on his face, like he was trying to figure out how I worked or something. I grinned.

"If it's all right with you, Queen, we just might have to make use of that portal," Riku said, turning back to her. She looked surprised.

"Oh, oh of course." She said, and looked at the dog and duck.

"Riku, we'll come with ya!" The dog said enthusiastically. The duck nodded, giving me a dirty look.

Ohhh no, no. I was not going anywhere with those two. I did not like them. I glared back at the duck, and crossed my arms. No.

"No," Riku said, like I totally ex-… no, like I totally did not expect him too. Huh, maybe he's cooler than I thought. The dog and duck looked at him surprised, and even the Queen looked shocked. Riku put on a grin, "Not that I wouldn't want you to go with me, but there's someplace where I think you're needed more."

"You're talking about Sora, right?" The duck asked. "Well, we can just meet up with him."

"Yeah," The dog nodded, then looked at Riku. "Uh, that's right, right Riku?"

"Sora's… not traveling." Riku looked down at the floor for a moment, then looked back at the dog and duck. "There was a storm… a storm of darkness, I think. After it, Sora was… Sora wasn't himself."

Another mood dropper, that's just great. As if the place wasn't already swimming with the feeling of depressyness.

"The darkness, it might get back to Destiny Islands again, and Sora needs someone there to protect him," Riku said. The dog and duck looked at each other, eyes all sad. "Is there any way for you to get to him?"

"Well… with the barriers up, the only thing that could get out would be a gummy ship." The Queen said, folding her hands again. The dog and duck looked at her, then nodded.

"We need to find Chip and Dale, and tell them to get the ship ready," The duck said, then looked at Riku. "Are you suuuure you don't need us?"

"We'll be fine," Riku said. We. The duck looked at me and 'hmph'd' a little.

"Do you want to rest a little before you go on?" The Queen asked. Oh, Queenie, it's obvious you have never met Riku before. So obvious.

"No, the sooner we get going the better," Riku said, "We've got supplies prepared."

"Very well, follow me," The Queen give us both a small smile – heh, me too! Wow, I felt special. Then she went to stand in front of the large painting of the King's seal and lifted her hand. A soft light began glowing in her palm, and the painting started reacting to it, glowing all white and purple and glittery. A long white line shot out from the middle of it towards the ceiling and the floor. It widened, and then with a flash disappeared, leaving behind a rectangular opening in the wall. The Queen headed into it, and the duck and dog followed, and we followed after them.

We came to a spiraling stone staircase, and there were these nifty little glowy cone things on the walls that lit the way. They weren't fire, but they gave a lot of light and they looked really nice too. I reached out to touch one but Riku gave me this _look_, like "NO". Not cool. We headed down the staircase, just walking and walking and just took forever, we must have been ten miles underground or something. Finally we reached the end of the staircase and stopped in front of a decorated door. The Queen did her glowy hand thing again, and the door melted away and we stepped into the room.

The walls were circular and colored a sort of melty gray-white-pearl. The floor was ice blue, like totally ice blue. It was glaring. Then, there in the middle of the room, was the portal. I don't know, I was expecting the whole swirly black purple darkness thing, I mean, that's what I thought of when I thought of portals, but this thing was a swirly sort of yellowish-goldish-whitish light. I was getting bad vibes from it, really, really bad vibes. The Queen and Riku and the duck and dog stepped closer to it, but I was not going anywhere near that thing. It was like the stupid barrier outside this world, only all condensed into this one spot. I shuddered.

"The portal links through the barriers outside the world, to keep the darkness from coming in through them." The Queen explained. Great. Wonderful. The barrier that hates people with no hearts, now a tunnel. A tunnel that I'm apparently supposed to go through. Awesome. Riku turned to look at me.

"I'm so going to die," I said.

"No you're not," Riku tried to sound all cocky and sure. "At least, you shouldn't."

I frowned at him. He may sound all positive about it, and sure and stuff, but no way. What if the thing disintegrated me? Or turned me so upside down inside out I wouldn't know who I was anymore? No, thank you.

Riku stepped closer to me and leaned over.

"You could always go with the duck," He whispered. I scowled at him, and he smirked again. God dammit.

"All right, all right, fine. I'm going," I groaned. Not cool. Riku just stepped away and turned to the Queen and the duck and dog. He thanked them and they said stuff and whatever. I was too busy giving the portal a wary look to pay much attention. And then, way before I was ready (like I ever would be) we were going into the portal. The Queen looked after us, smiling gently and probably all hopeful we were going to find her King somewhere. Sure lady, sure. The duck and dog were looking after us too as we went in, the dog waving and the duck all impatient and tapping his foot. Animal people. What is up with the animal people? I was happy we were leaving the place.

I was not happy, however, to be leaving it through a giant vortex of blinding, disorienting light stuff.

"Ah!"

I… was panicking.

"Don't scream!" Riku said, somewhere. I don't know where. I couldn't see him, I couldn't see me, I couldn't see anything except excruciatingly bright light. "Just calm down!"

"How am I supposed to calm down? How? I can't see myself! I can't… am I still here? There? Somewhere? Where am I?" Was I still talking? I didn't know, I couldn't tell. Up and down and forward and backward were all gone, whoosh, no more. Was I standing? Sitting? Rolled into a ball and stuffed under a seat? I don't know!

Someone grabbed me by my arm suddenly. I yelped and jumped but then I remembered that the only one there other than me (if I was there at all, which was still up for debate) was Riku.

"Demyx, calm down," He said, voice all controlled and utterly, utterly patient.

"Okay," I whimpered.

"Now, just go forward, just think to yourself that you're walking forward, okay?" Riku pulled at my arm, and I took one step. Another. "See, not that difficult."

"It's different," I said, taking more steps. Okay, I was… sort of getting the hang with it. I didn't feel comfortable though. The light was all up in everything, it was weird. I didn't like it, it felt creepy.

"What is?" Riku asked.

"The light… It's all invasive," I shuddered and grimaced. "I… I feel _violated_."

There was a bit of silence.

"Violated?" Riku asked, a touch of amusement in his voice. The bastard.

"Shut up, it's embarrassing." I pulled my arm out of his hold, but vertigo hit me and I couldn't figure out what was going on so I reached back out towards him and grabbed at his arm. Riku let out a loud sigh and I know he rolled his eyes – I know it, I know he rolled his eyes!

"Come on, it's not that far, just keep moving," Riku said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Well Mr. Silver-haired-stupid-face, maybe it's easy for you because you can actually see what you are walking on, but you wouldn't find it so easy if you couldn't see or feel the ground, now would you? No, I think not!

Except, he was right, it was easy after I got the hang of it, and the other side of the portal wasn't that far away, so it was a really short trip. Didn't change the fact that I felt all light-dirty. That light-barrier-tunnel thing was weird, like in an inappropriate-touching-by-close-family-relative sort of way. Not that I'd know anything about that, but that's what I imagined it'd feel like. Ew.

We passed out the other side of the portal, and for a long moment all I could see were spots of red and green and white everywhere.

"Woah, this is totally psychedelic." I stated, turning around and watching the spots waver and grow and get smaller and larger again. "It's kind of cool. I can't see anything, but it's still kind of cool."

Riku, being the extremely nice person that he was (harhar) actually waited until I could see mostly normal again before saying we should get moving. Wherever we were, it was night and really dark. A few houses had lights on in the windows, but most were dark. There were walls and the whole place was set up kind of weird, with each section of houses on its own level. We were on a lower level, but they were stepped and went up and up and then there was a wall of stone and beyond that were glistening pale castle spires and they looked really familiar. Like, I knew this place. I looked over at Riku, and he was staring up at the castle spires too. The castle was all shiny and new, but the shape. Oh, I knew it. I knew what it was.

"Wait a sec…" I frowned, thinking, then pointed up at the castle spires and said slowly, "Hollow Bastion."

Riku gave me a weird look. A really weird look. Then he looked up at the spires again for a long moment, and then he turned around and looked at the houses and buildings and the levels.

"You're right." He said, then laughed. "You're right, but it looks so different. I hadn't been back since…"

He paused, looked up at the castle again.

"Sora told me about it. He said it was called something different now…" Riku was quiet for a little bit longer before finally speaking. "Radiant Garden. That's what it's called."

Radiant Garden. I turned around and looked back up. The castle spires gleamed bright in the dark night, shining like a beacon.

****

Radiant sort of matched, I guess. Every now and then this sparkly stuff would shower down from the sky, making everything look like it got hit by a huge dose of glitter. It wasn't glitter, even though it was all glittery, because it would only last a little while and the shiny specks would disappear. It was kind of like glittery snow, yeah. That's more like it, glittery snow.

Well, with the dark and all, our way through town was pretty uneventful. Riku was a bit worried about the whole coat thing, since seriously, if there was a list of places that would recognize it, this town would definitely be somewhere near the top. Still, come on, I was part of the Organization, being super-sneaky and unseen was, it was like second nature to us, you know? And sure, I wasn't exactly the best at it, that was Xiggy what with his crazy gravity-defying and warp-portal-thing powers, but I wasn't exactly bad at it. I mean, I was pretty decent with the sneaking and the not-being seen, especially in the dark. Seriously, black coat, black boots, black night? Perfect combo.

We snuck our way through most of town, heading towards the castle. Riku said that if the King was anywhere, he was there, and that maybe we could find some info in the castle's library too. I didn't ask how we were going to get inside, figured it was better to learn at the last minute because hey, the less time I wasted on agonizing over whether I'd be dying or not, the better. Every now and then a globe kind of thing rolled across the cobblestone streets, and we'd dodge to an alleyway as it rolled past. I had no idea what the weird little things did.

"What is that?" I asked Riku, nodding towards the most recent of the ball things. He shrugged, watching it as it rolled around the corner of a house, then motioned for us to get going again.

"Looks mechanical… Sora said there had been a defense system installed, maybe that's part of it," Riku said, leading the way up a flight of stone steps. I followed behind him, and we entered the Bailey. There was a huge window-thing opening up onto a view of the castle, and I walked over to take a look at the thing. Still not as cool as The Castle That Never Was, but it was pretty cool. Very pale, but not that void-white that The Castle That Never Was was. More like a pearly sort of thing, with a hint of rose. Or salmon. I don't know, it'd been a while since I had crayons in my hands. I leaned on the window-thing's sill and looked over at Riku. He was looking over a large gate at the end of the Bailey.

"Locked?" I asked, and he nodded. Then he held out his hand and the swirly purple blackness did its thing and the Keyblade appeared in his hand. He pointed it at the lock on the gates, and there was a small flash of light and a click.

"That thing is seriously useful," I walked over and pushed on the gate. The locking thing separated easily and the gate swung open. Riku was looking down at his Keyblade.

"Why did it open?" He said. I turned around and gave him an odd look.

"Because it's a Keyblade, and opening stuff is what Keyblades do?" I supplied. He looked at me, and he did not look happy. I backed up a few steps, straight into the wall, because – this is totally not cool – the Keyblade was pointed straight at me now. It wasn't really that close to me, but man, I did not like having any weapon pointed at me, especially not a Keyblade. I don't like Keyblades. They can stay far, far away from me, I'd be totally fine with that.

"This Keyblade doesn't," Riku said, still pointing that damn thing at me.

"Well, obviously it does, because it just did," I pointed out helpfully, grinning and pointing at the open gate. The Keyblade inched closer. Not good, not good.

"This Keyblade hasn't done anything useful since the battle with Xemnas," Riku said, evenly and kind of coldly. "Now, it's opening doorways in barriers and unlocking locks, like it's supposed to. Why?"

"Uh, you're really asking the wrong person here…" I reminded him. Like I was going to know, right? Riku frowned and made the Keyblade disappear with a wave of his hand. He glared at the gate for a long while, and I wondered if it was safe to detach myself from the wall. It was uncomfortable and there were these sharp pointed pieces digging into my back.

"Come on," Riku said finally, and headed through the open gate. I peeled myself off of the wall and stepped after him. There were stairs heading downwards and towards the castle, there must be a dip or maybe we were coming off of a ridge. I followed Riku around a bend in the shrubbery that met us and towards a sort of courtyard thing. It was a pretty nice setup, there were bushes and benches all around this large square area with granite stones set into a pattern, a really nice one too. There was this nice sea green border and these other sort of cream colored stones in a weird sort of arcing pattern, and these light blue stones that kind of looked like flowers and kind of looked like… er, a little like hearts, I guess. At the far end was this huge stone arch, with flowers all creeping up on it. Looked kind of familiar, though. Kind of, like I was here before. Hmm.

I frowned, and looked after Riku. He'd made it halfway across the courtyard thing, but he stopped and looked back at me. Something about this place. I shrugged, started walking forward and stepped onto the granite stones –

-_ I bet you can't even fight! –_

I took a quick step back. I felt cold, very cold. Just cold.

"Demyx?" Riku called back to me, but I couldn't respond. I wrapped my arms around myself – I was so cold. I wasn't supposed to be feeling cold –

-_ you can't trick us!– _

That stupid duck! That bastard duck! I clenched my fingers tight. I could see it, the blue walls of stone behind the tall evergreen trees. The arch! The arch was broken – it is broken – it's shifting between broken and not broken. I struggled to keep the swirling, coiling, sick sick feeling stuffed deep down inside me and not up front, keep it down deep where it couldn't get into my head, couldn't get where it would start twisting it up and making me remember –

_ -the Keyblade! The Keyblade – _

- remember, I don't want to remember, god dammit memories, I don't want –

-_oh god oh god it hurts it hurts it –_

I don't want it anymore. Why here? Why is it here? Why are the stones all cleaned and why is the arch all fixed and why do people come here to sit on benches and don't they know don't they know what what happened here? Don't they know -

-_Roxas… Roxas! … why…-_

Something touched my shoulder, and I jumped, jerked away violently. Riku was staring at me like I was crazy, ha, crazy. Crazy. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him close, face to face.

"Keyblade! You have it. One of them. A Keyblade, a blade of the key variety," I babbled, I ranted. My hands were shaking and my stomach hurt, even though I didn't have a stomach to be hurting, not really. My arm hurt and my head hurt and I felt like something was seep, seep, seeping out and out even though nothing was.

"What's going o-"

"Why am I helping you?" I growled, twisting my fingers in the fabric of his shirt. Riku stood very still, eyeing me carefully. Carefully. I kept twisting my fingers in his shirt. I felt sick.

"If anyone should know it's you," He said. Me. I should know. I should know. Why? Why?

"They were orders from the Superior. You didn't… you didn't go back on orders from the Superior," I whispered, nodding my head. I loosened my death grip on Riku's shirt a little, just a little. "You didn't, you just didn't, or you'd end up a Dusk or, or you'd end up something worse. Or somewhere worse. Or just not end up anywhere, ever again."

"Demyx…" Riku started, then reached out slowly and put his hands on my shoulders. I jerked a little, my fingers clenched in his shirt fabric again. "Is this where you fought Sora?"

"I liked him, he was a cool kind of kid, cool," I couldn't stop talking, I didn't want to. I could feel the deep dark thing in the pit of me twisting up and reaching out and if I stopped talking it'd get a hold of my head and I didn't want it to. "He was cool, kind of quiet. Never got really friendly with him, didn't really wanna hang out with me but then pretty much no one did except for Xiggy. No, he was cool and, and he did the whole Keyblade thing pretty well. He did it pretty awesome. He was pretty awesome."

"Demyx!" Riku shook me a little, and I lost track of what I was saying. I stared at him, stifling the sick, sick feeling deep inside.

"Why are people so happy in this place?" I asked quietly. Did I have a hold of myself finally? I didn't know, I couldn't be sure, but the chopped up memories and that dark, dark thing were receding a bit. I looked at Riku, I wanted an answer, but he didn't say anything, just got this weird, sad, dark look in his eyes, and then I realized I knew the answer already. I knew, I knew, they were happy for the same reason I was torn.

"We need to cross here if we want to get to the castle," Riku said. I nodded, and forced my fingers to let go of his shirt. Riku let go of my shoulders, but he was still giving me an uncertain look. I turned to the courtyard, and of course the freaking glitter snow had to start coming down right then. Thank you glitter snow, you made me feel oh-so-much-better.

Riku started onto the courtyard again, and I followed close this time, wincing as I stepped onto the stone. Sure enough, the memories started surfacing again in a haze. I started humming, a random tune that I tried to keep cheerful and upbeat. It didn't' last long, and by the time we'd crossed the courtyard thing it was all sharp and rapid and totally out of beat, and Riku was giving me a really odd look. The second my feet touched down outside the courtyard, I took off running towards the arch and dashed around the edge of it and into the next area. Oh man, I felt better already!

"That was really, really weird," I muttered as Riku walked through the arch. "Wasn't that weird?"

"And now you're back to normal," Riku rolled his eyes. "No words exist that could describe just your strangeness."

"What? Hey! Yeah? And, and there's no words that exist that could describe your… your…" I pointed at him, I'd figure this out.

"Train derail?" He smirked. God dammit. Bastard.

"Ugh! I just had this weird… memory… crazy thing and you're over here being mean to me," I said, crossing my arms. Riku dropped the smirk and got this… I don't know, sorry look on his face, like, like he was going to say sorry or something, but he didn't, and that was good because if he did I would have probably kicked him in the shins or something.

"Come on, the castle isn't too far off," Riku said, grinning a little, but it was a preoccupied sort of grin. I kicked at a loose stone near my feet and followed him through some winding corridor like passages in the blue stone. What the hell was that blue stone? It was everywhere, but only just around the castle. Weird. Man, and these people really liked their extravagances and stuff, there were pretty decorated benches everywhere and carefully trimmed bushes, and there was even a fountain in one stone wall. Like, on the wall, a waterfall kind of fountain. It was pretty neat, I spent some time playing around with it. I mean, seriously, how often do you get to see a wall-waterfall-fountain? Not that often, that's how often. So I splashed around with it, and then I realized that Riku wasn't there anymore and I had to go run to catch up with him because the bastard left me behind. He just gave me that grin-smirk when I caught up and led the way up another stone staircase.

It ended at the top of the blue stone surrounding the castle. The area was pretty flat, and there was a road thing with ornamental railing at the edges leading towards the castle's main gate. There were bushes and some statues along the base of the wall that ran all the way around the castle, and it looked like the only way in was through the gate. One problem: the gate was guarded by two, pretty alert looking guardspeople.

"Now, we have to figure out how to get inside…" Riku said quietly. I nodded.

"So going up and asking for a day pass is out of the question?" I asked. Riku gave me that _look_. "Yeah, that's what I thought. So, perimeter check for possible entry points?"

"…yeah," Riku looked a little surprised. Why? I mean, I was part of a group that did recon on a regular basis. I mean, I didn't just sit around playing my sitar all day. I tried to, I really did, but I actually did do some work sometimes.

"All right!" I grinned and looked around. There were larger bushes to the right, so… "Let's go that way."

We headed off to the right, hopping over the low railing and dodging behind bushes. It wasn't that difficult, really. People can only notice so much, and the guards at the gate could only have, what, twenty feet of clear view from where they stood? Sure, there might be a patrol, but I doubted it. The place just looked like one huge vacation town, all flowers and sunshine and all that stuff. Probably didn't have a lot of trouble anymore, now that the Heartless and stuff were gone.

After getting a good distance away from the main road thing, we started getting closer to the wall itself. It was just around twenty feet tall, probably. All stone, but really flat, glistening stone. Not that easy to climb, let me tell you. Still, there were some statues that stood sort of close to the wall, maybe we could use those.

"Do any of the statue things look like climbable?" I asked Riku. He looked around, frowning, then shook his head.

"Climbable, yeah, but nothing we've see so far is tall enough, and most wouldn't be able to give us good footing." He looked back up at the wall. Man, what I wouldn't give to be able to do the teleport thing. Wait, maybe I could do the teleport thing. I hadn't tried it yet, after all. I focused up on a spot on at the top of the wall and just really, really wanted to get there. That's how it worked, you just really wanted to get there and wham! There you were. Except, I wasn't. At the top of the wall, I wasn't there. Didn't work. Great.

"What was that?" Riku was looking at me curiously. I looked at him with the same look.

"What was what?" I asked.

"That, what you did. You got… wavery." Riku narrowed his eyes a little. I frowned, wavery, huh?

"I tried to teleport," I said, and pointed up at the wall. "Up there, but it didn't work. Don't know what the wavery thing is about, though."

"You probably lost focus on keeping your form while you tried to teleport." Riku said, and looked back up at the wall. "There has to be a way inside, maybe some back opening…"

"You know, for a good guy, you're not really doing things the 'good' way," I said, and Riku cocked an eyebrow and gave me a look.

"Just because you're a 'good guy', doesn't mean everyone's going to hand you everything on command," Riku started walking along the base of the wall again, and I followed.

"You got into The Castle That Never Was without anyone noticing until after you were gone tons of times," I said. I remembered, the security breaches and disappearing Nobodies and Xemnas getting all pissy.

"Yeah, but it was a bit easier when I could still summon portals," Riku snorted and looked up at some tall bushes. They were pretty thick at the bottom but they got thinner up top. No climbing them.

"They were pretty cool, weren't they? I mean, yeah the darkness thing was kind of icky, but that's what the coats were for…" I sighed, "They were so handy."

"Shh…" Riku held up a hand suddenly, and I stopped. I looked at him curiously, but then I heard it; footsteps. We looked around, and there behind us was a spot of light moving closer as the footsteps sounded louder. Riku looked at me, and motioned his head to the side, and I nodded. As quietly as we could we ran in the other direction, keeping as close to the wall as we could. It wasn't long until we ran into another one, this one perpendicular to the one on our left. For a moment we just stared at it, but the light behind us was coming closer through the decoratively planted bushes, and we started along it towards the far side. No luck there either, halfway to the blue-stone-wall thing, there was a deep, deep ditch in the ground, and the other side was a good twenty feet away.

"This is great!" I exclaimed, throwing my hands up. Riku gave me a look, then turned around. I looked back and saw the light heading towards us, faster than it had been before. Awesome, whoever it was must have noticed something wasn't right. "What now?"

"You hide, and don't come out until I take the cork out," Riku said, "I'll handle the guard, or whoever it is."

"All right, if you say so," I shrugged and uncorked the bag. Hey, if that's what he wanted, then that's what he got. I let myself flow into the bottle and felt the cork get put in. It was kind of relaxing, not holding a form, but it was kind of boring too, just sitting there. Watery. There wasn't much to do, and even though I tried to see if I could pick up any vibrations from outside the bag, they were so muffled it was hard to make heads or tails of anything. Then the bag started moving and I started sloshing around with the water inside of it. I didn't know what was happening, but I guessed all that was left was to sit and wait.

****

I didn't know how much time had passed, but it was long enough for me to recite all the facts I knew about cuttlefish, and let me tell you, I knew A LOT about cuttlefish. They're just so awesome, and cute, and cuddly. I wanted a cuttlefish, I wanted one so bad. That would be the coolest thing ever. Just have one of them in a neat little tank, and change backgrounds on it so it would have to camouflage itself and go from like, blue-green to purple with gray spots and then orangey with stripes. That would be the coolest thing ever. I'd name it Jolly Roger and I'd make its tank pirate themed with that neat little bubble chest and sunken pirate ship and everything. It would rock.

It was kind of surprising when the cork suddenly got pulled out the bag's neck, I wasn't really expecting it. I felt the bag tip, and I pushed the water out onto the ground and reformed myself. It was kind of dark, and the ground wasn't the ground outside, but concrete tiles. Dark, concrete tiles, walls that were really, really close all around, and a barred gate as a door. Not exactly four-star accommodations. I looked at Riku curiously. He did not look happy. Great.

"They didn't even ask questions, just threw me down here," Riku was very not happy. He handed me the water bag and stalked over to the gate. I slung the bag over my shoulder and walked to stand next to him. There really wasn't a lot of room in that cell thing, it was really scrunched.

"So, are we thinking of how to get out of here?" I asked, risking a glance at Riku. He looked like he was thinking something over.

"We could wait until morning and see who they take us to," Riku started, then shook his head. "No, there's something wrong here. The guards were really jumpy, and the way they didn't even ask who I was…"

I just nodded and waited. Riku mused on for a bit, then backed away from the gate and motioned for me to do the same. I scurried back as the Keyblade materialized in his hand again, not wanting to be anywhere in its range, and he pointed it at the gate. The Keyblade shot a thin beam of light at the lock, and there was an audible click. Riku stepped forward and pushed the gate open, not yet releasing the Keyblade.

"We're in the castle. If we're careful, we can try to make it up to the library." Riku said, moving out into the corridor beyond the cell. I followed him, looking around. Cells, cells, and more cells, nothing but grated doors all around us. A very nice vacation spot. I walked after Riku as he made his way down the corridor.

"Maybe they won't catch us this time!" I said cheerfully. Riku turned to give me a dark look, then headed on down the corridor. I listened for any sounds, but the place was eerily quiet. We made it to the end of the corridor and found another grated door, only this one was slightly open. Peeking past it, I could see there was a table and a chair, and another door on the far side of the room. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, all flicker and shooting shadows all over the place. Riku motioned towards the other door, and we trotted across the room towards it. The doorway opened up onto a staircase, and we dashed up it as quick as we could. It was kind of dark and spooky on the staircase, it didn't really look like this part of the castle had been used in a while. The stairs ended at a landing, and another door. This one was locked, and Riku used the Keyblade again and we made our way through. Another corridor – how many freaking hallways did this place have? – only this one had plush carpeting down the center of it and some statues along the sides. Okay, that meant we were in the main part of the castle. Riku seemed to recognize the place, he looked around for a bit then started to lead the way towards one of the doorways.

"How much farther is it?" I whispered, following Riku through the doorway and down the next hallway. There were more statues and some standing armor things there. There were some tapestries on the wall too, huge tapestries with weird animals on them and plants and stuff.

"We need to get to another staircase, there should be one coming up soon," Riku said, gently pushing open another door. We walked out into a large curving hallway. Riku took a left and I followed behind, and soon we started nearing an intersection, with another hallway joining from the right and stairs going up on the left. We crept up to the corner and waited and listened for a moment, then Riku motioned towards the stairs and started towards them. I was about to move after him when I suddenly heard a noise, a really really almost quiet noise, from the hallway to the right. Riku stopped and took a step back, looking over to the right and I looked too. A tall figure turned into the corridor at the far end, but I couldn't see any features in the darkness. Whoever it was definitely noticed us, though, and their footsteps sped up.

"Hey, what are you doing here?"

Funny, that voice sounded a little familiar. I squinted, trying to see who it could be.

"Dammit," Riku breathed, looking torn between two decisions. The figure was getting closer, and he finally raised his Keyblade and pointed it down the hallway. I heard the person give a muttered curse, and they sped up even more, pulling something off of their back.

"Put down your weapon!"

God dammit, I knew that voice… While I was busy trying to figure out why it sounded so familiar, Riku let loose, the Keyblade glowing and releasing a bolt of lightning. It went wide, on purpose probably, what with the good-guys-don't-go-around-attacking-people thing, arcing to the side and glancing down the wall of the hallway past the figure. I blinked, backing up into the wall. Thunder magic was just not cool. Riku took a step backwards towards the stairs, but the person had already reacted, and a large object whirled its way through the air towards him. Riku brought his Keyblade up, blocking it easily, and swung the blade out, ready to start towards the stairs. One problem; there was another thing in the air right not far behind the first one, and too close for him to do anything about it. So while he tried to bring his Keyblade back up to block, I stopped musing on voices (who was it?) and put myself to use, because let's face it, there's only one thing I was good for anymore. I pushed Riku out of the way, maybe a little bit too hard but hey, at least he wasn't going to get whacked, right? Well, he wasn't, but I was, and the thing hit me as soon as I moved, and everything disappeared from view as I felt myself rain onto the steps. Awesome, I was water again, or, er, water in the watery form sort of way.

I pulled myself back together as soon as I could. I mean, I didn't think Riku would leave me behind, but hey, let's not take any chances, right? I came back to find Riku standing next to me in front of the stairs, still looking into the opposite hallway, and I leaned over quick to pick up the water bag from the floor. Would've been nice to just pick it up while I was forming, but I forgot. Oh well. Not far from the bag lay what I guessed was the thing that had crashed into me. It was a round ring thing with crossed handles through the center, and spikes sticking out at even intervals through the sides. Huh, see, now that, that I knew pretty well. I mean, it was sort of different, less silver, more black and red, but the shape? Totally the same.

I stood up and looked into the hallway at the person in front of us. Dressed differently, yeah, and while his hair was still red and still spiked like a hedgehog, it was a bit shorter than it had been. His eyes were still that crazy acid green, as far as I could tell in the darky darkness, and he was still tall and thin as a rail. Metabolism? Maybe, he really should eat more. I lifted my hand and waved at him, and he just stood there and stared at me like he was seeing a ghost or something. Well, eheh, I guess for him he was, wasn't he?

"Come on," Riku said suddenly, grabbing my arm and pulling me along, not up the stairs but down the adjacent hallway.

"Hey, did you see who that was?" I asked, stumbling after him.

"Yes, I did," Riku hurried along, pulling me towards a far doorway. I looked after us, but we weren't being followed.

"But he looked a little different, not so…" I gasped suddenly, digging my heels into the ground and pulling Riku to a stop. "That, that was his somebody, wasn't it? It was! It was his _somebody_. Oh, bastard found his heart."

I turned around, ready to… I don't know, go back there and kick him in the shin? Maybe. Riku pulled at me again, nearly pulling me over, and headed for the doorway again. I grimaced and tried to stop again, but Riku wasn't having any of it, He pulled us through the doorway and we found ourselves on another staircase, this one leading down.

"Look, I don't care if it's his somebody, I don't care if he has his heart, your heart, whoever's heart," Riku hissed as we headed down the stairs, he still had a death grip on my arm. "What I care about is that he has a guard's uniform on, and if he catches up, we'll be back down below, with guards this time, and no way of getting out."

"Are we ditching the library idea then?" I asked, and Riku gave me a withering look. I grinned nervously and put up my one free hand in surrender. "Okay, okay, got it. We're leaving, let's go."

Riku let go of my arm finally, and we dashed down the stairs towards the lower floors.


	7. Wild Boys Fallen Far From Glory

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

I am a definite member of the "Demyx is not a 5-year-old" club.

You know, you can't really call it stupidity if it just happens to be a lack of knowledge. You can't blame someone for not knowing that there's a difference between a flute and a piccolo if the only musical instrument they know of is a kazoo, or bongo drums. Right?

Well, what can I say. This chapter is a behemoth and I'm mad at it, because I'm going to be comparing all the rest of my chapter lengths to this one. I want to kick it. Still, I enjoyed writing this (haha, when do I not enjoy writing this story?) and I hope you all enjoy reading this.

Oh man, this story is so long in my head. I hope you can all bear with me as this goes on, and on. It's not going to be ending soon.

**Thanks to:**

The Seventh Horcrux

Different Realm

It's seriously starting to look that I'm only writing this for you two, really, but I don't mind. I hope you enjoy. :D

**Review yes yes?**

* * *

_Wild boys fallen far from glory_

* * *

The mad dash we were taking ended at the bottom landing and a large, locked door. Riku pointed his Keyblade at it, and the lock creaked and clicked. He pushed the door open a crack and we both peered out, checking to see what was beyond it. The stairs behind us were quiet, it didn't seem like anyone was following us that way, but that didn't mean that we wouldn't run into anyone. It probably would've been a little easier to see what was going on beyond the door if there was any light there. Whatever, Riku nodded finally and pushed the door open just wide enough for us to squeeze through. We moved across the floor of a sparsely decorated hallway. There were no windows, but a breeze was sort of wafting from the large open entranceway at the far end of the hallway. I had no idea what part of the castle this was, but if there was a breeze that meant that there was a way to the outside world, and that's exactly what we were aiming for.

We slid up against the wall next to the opening, and Riku peeked around the corner to check things out. The darkness was really annoying, seriously, and the whole silence of the place was getting a little, er, unnerving. It looked like we were going to head on again, but then there were echoes coming from beyond the large entrance, footsteps and muffled voices. I looked past Riku and saw a few flickering lights heading towards us. The voices didn't sound too happy. Riku cursed under his breath and we both dodged back as a long beam of light spread out from the group of people and lit up the area. I flattened myself against the wall and Riku did the same. Not good, this was definitely not good.

"Now what?" I whispered, watching the light in the entranceway growing brighter. I seriously doubted they'd let us off with just a dungeon stay this time around. Riku just shook his head. Not good, not good. What the hell were we going to do now? Go back? What if whatever-his-name-is-now was still there, or coming down the stairs, or something?

I wasn't shaking, but I wasn't not feeling shaky either, I felt all wobbly, and it wasn't because I've been holding my form too long or something, because I wasn't. The light was getting closer, and there was nothing we could do, and Riku looked like he was trying to figure something out, and I was starting to feel like a rabbit in a trap, or something, there's no way out of this one, but there had to be. Riku nodded back towards the stairway door, and we started sneaking our way back down the hallway. The light was getting closer, and we were probably going to have to run soon, but no sense making more noise than you need to. Yeah. Except I was totally ready for that running thing, I did not want to get caught by anyone. They'd know who I was! I wouldn't get a fair trial, let's face it, there was no jury of peers for me, no way. Besides, what if they found out I was, you know, water? What if they tried to evaporate me? Would I be totally gone then? Like super totally no way to come back gone, like what Zexi had said was supposed to happen?

I started moving a bit faster, I couldn't help it, but Riku was right behind me so at least I wasn't looking like a total coward, right? Whatever, it didn't matter, because we were like a third of the way down the hallway and beam of light was almost on us and someone slipped through the door that we were heading for. Someone we'd left standing looking all lost and disoriented a few levels above, someone who was still looking at us both like he'd just stepped into a ghost movie or something. Riku stiffened, readying his Keyblade, and I plastered myself to the wall, because let's face it, I so did not want to get in the middle of this, but Mr. Redhead just gave us the universal signal for shush and sprinted past us towards the large entrance where the sound of voices was getting louder. I looked at Riku and he looked surprised and we both looked towards the entranceway. The figure had disappeared past it, but voices were rising now, animated and urgent and then the light was turning away and the sound of clomping boots echoed down the hallway as the light moved away.

Then _he_ was back (man, what do I call him now?), running a hand through his hair and looking back over his shoulder as he walked over to us. He gave us a quick look-over, then started talking in a quiet voice.

"I don't know why you two are here, and together at that, but this isn't exactly the time for chit-chat," The guy-formerly-known-as-Axel said, "I don't have a lot of time, so listen up. Right past this doorway is a knight statue. You need to push it aside, it's not that heavy, and then count three bricks up from the floor. Push in the brick, and a small fake door should open up. Go down through it, the tunnel will lead you out into the Bailey. Head down two levels, there'll be a small house with flower planters hanging outside the windows. It'll have a crescent moon carved in the door right above the handle. Knock three times, and tell whoever opens that door that Lea sent you. If it's a lady with green eyes and long brown hair, there shouldn't be a problem, but if it's someone else and they don't want to let you in, just barge in anyways, because they're being an idiot."

Lea? I stared at him, trying to wrap my head around what he said, because he was talking kind of fast. He tapped a finger against his temple and gave us that classic smirk and I felt a little twinge somewhere and it was a weird kind of feeling.

"Got it memorized?" Lea said. I frowned, but Riku just gave a snort.

"Yeah," Riku said, and he looked at me but I was still focused on frowning at… at Lea. That name sounded weird, and he just looked weird but he didn't and I was just getting this all-mixed-up kind of feeling inside and I didn't like it too much. Then Lea looked at me and the acidness of his eyes sort of got dimmer, like someone turned down the lights, but then he nodded towards the big doorway and turned and headed back to the staircase door at a quick trot. Twisting, twisting, that feeling somewhere, like there was a whirlpool somewhere in the pit of my stomach – or where it should be – and it was sucking all of me into it and then spitting me back out again. I realized I was clenching my fists. Huh.

"Come on," Riku said, and I turned and followed him, a little disoriented.

"What are we supposed to do again?" I asked, following him past the entranceway and into the hallway beyond it. He turned his head to give me a look, like a I-can't-believe-you-weren't-paying-attention kind of look, and oh great, I was failing something again, wasn't I? Dammit, whatever, Riku just shook his head and lead the way over to a large statue of a knight, and motioned for me to help him out. We put our shoulders to the side and pushed, and surprisingly the giant stone thing actually moved, like it wasn't as heavy as it should have been. Riku crouched down in the place where the statue had stood, and I noticed these gouges in the floor, right where the statue had stood. Something like, tracks or something. Someone had planned for the thing to be movable. Riku prodded at the wall, and there was a sound of rock grinding on rock, and a section of the wall shuddered and swung in. It was small, like, two feet by three feet sort of small. Tiny. We had to squeeze in there? Well, it wasn't a squeeze, really, but still. It wasn't a doorway either.

Riku climbed in through it, and I followed, still feeling a little weird. Dammit. What was wrong? Whatever, I just kept going, the way behind the door kind of squished for a little distance. I heard the door swing shut again, rock on rock, and then another grinding sort of sound, probably the statue moving back into place. It was super dark there, and the only light was the strange glowy purple stuff around Riku's Keyblade, and all that did really was… nothing. It didn't really do anything, except glow all purple and stuff.

After a little while I heard Riku stand up, and I saw a small flash as his Keyblade disappeared. I sped up and reached the place where he had been. There was a bit more light here, a sort of glow from all around. I pulled myself out of the small tunnel thing we'd been in and stood up next to Riku. We were still in a tunnel, just a larger one, but the walls were slimy dirt covered stone and the floor was muddy and squishy. I grimaced, the mud was trying to get into me, the whole water displacement thing going on, and that was just not cool. I did not need dirty mud water in me, ew. The glow all around us was coming from some sort of moss thing growing on the sides of the tunnels, and it was enough to see a few feet further down the tunnel with.

We walked on, hunching down every now and then when the ceiling dipped, but keeping up a pretty decent pace. It wasn't long before the tunnel thing started gradually arcing upwards, and we found ourselves running into a stone wall. There was moisture glistening on the stones, and more of that moss stuff growing all over them. Riku gave me a look, then put his shoulder to the stones and pushed. A creak, a grinding sort of one, and the wall started moving. Slowly. Really slowly. I realized that he probably wasn't going to be able to push it open all by himself, so I helped him out. It was a narrow sort of door that pushed open, just barely wide enough for one person to walk out through. We stepped out into the still-dark Bailey, and pushed the stones back into place. Man, this was one hell of a ride. I looked at Riku, and he motioned for me to follow him down the steps to the lower level the Bailey was connected to.

I followed him down the steps and past dark windowed houses, trying to remember what Ax– _Lea_ – had told us, but I couldn't. Just, nope, not coming back. Something about a house, sure, and that we should say he sent us, but how, why, where… I grimaced, the weird twisting and swirling inside getting all agitated and stuff. I put a hand to my stomach, but the water wasn't moving, I couldn't just make it stop, and I had no idea what was wrong. I was remembering something, maybe, or echoing some feelings, or something, but dammit. Dammit. I followed Riku down another flight of steps, past cheery looking bushes and neat little fences. There were houses here, but like home-houses, not business houses or that kind of stuff, just, places where you could tell people lived. There was something in the air here, something warm, and cloying, and kind of sickening but uplifting all the same. I clutched at my stomach and almost ran into Riku as he stopped at the corner of the street.

"Are you all right?" He asked quietly, giving me an odd look. I flashed a grin.

"Just dandy," I said cheerfully. Riku just raised an eyebrow and eyed me suspiciously for a moment.

"We're supposed to find a house with flower planters on the windows, and a crescent moon in the door above the handle," Riku said, and I focused so I wouldn't have to ask again. Flower planters, moon, okay. I nodded, and we headed out, slinking around edges of houses. It was kind of hard to figure out what we were looking at in the not so great lighting we had, but suddenly I saw something. I poked at Riku and showed him the house, and he nodded, and we headed over. Yup, planters at the windows, with these huge tulips and, and pansies, I think, and some other plants just spilling out of them. Like, literally, there were so many and they were just so huge that you could barely tell there was a planter holding them steady.

The shades of the house were drawn, but it looked like there was a light on inside. Weird, it was pretty late at night – or early in the morning, whatever. Riku walked up to the door and checked and yeah, there was a crescent moon over the handle. Riku reached out and knocked on the door three times, and I stuck myself to the side of the house and tried not to be too obvious if someone looked from the doorway. I mean, yeah I'd need to go in, but if whoever was inside knew anything about Nobodies (and I was pretty sure they would, if they knew Ax- _LEA, dammit_ – if they knew him, then they probably would, and they might not have the best opinion or whatever.

There were footsteps from behind the door, and then the sound of locks being turned. The door inched open a little, and one grayish-violet eye peered out.

"Who is it?" The voice was that of a girl, and she sounded a little miffed. The light was on, missy, it's obvious someone in the house wasn't sleeping. Duh.

"Lea sent us," Riku answered, giving a quick glance in my direction. The eye stared out at him for a moment, then the door was pulled open.

"Get in, quick," The girl said. I looked over to see who it was, maybe I'd seen her before? There was a vague sort of recollection, I'm sure she was around during that whole Heartless-Nobody battle thing, but it's not like I'd met her or anything. She had black hair cut just past her chin and some really revealing clothes, I mean, seriously. Short shorts, short tank top, shorter vest on top of tank top, really tall boots. Not that I was complaining, the view was pretty nice, right?

Riku motioned with his head for me to follow and stepped inside. I peeled myself off of the wall, crossed my fingers, and stepped into the girl's view. Her eyes narrowed, like, instantly, her hand came up in that sign for stop, and her lips curved down into a frown that actually looked kind of pretty on her face. Would have been prettier if she wasn't looking at me with daggers in her eyes. Oh yeah, they definitely knew about us here.

"What –" She started, practically spitting the word, and pointed at me, but Riku cut in hastily.

"He's with me, it's all right," Riku sounded very convincing, but the girl wasn't being convinced. She started to say something again, but Riku just grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the house, closing the door behind him. The girl looked at him, mouth wide with shock.

"Did you just barge in without even waiting to hear what I said?" She asked, all indignant, and put her hands on her hips.

"I think he did," I answered, grinning. She glared at me again, and I took a step back, grin faltering. She looked murderous.

I took a quick look around, saw we were in some sort of large living-dining room, sort of. There were no lights on in the room itself, but there was a light coming from a hallway branching out from the middle of the room.

"Yuffie, who is it?" Another girl's voice came from the hallway, but then she stepped into the room we were in, and I saw it wasn't a girl-girl, but more of a young-woman-girl. She had a rose colored dress on and long brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail, and these really deep green eyes.

"They say Lea sent them," Yuffie growled, crossing her arms in front of her and tapping her foot angrily. Riku looked over at the new girl- woman – lady? – as she stepped closer.

"I'm sure he had a good reason for it," She said. I didn't miss her critical look, but she didn't shoot daggers at me. She looked at Riku curiously and tilted her head slightly. "You look a little familiar…"

"I'm Riku," Riku started, and the lady's face lit up. She smiled and clasped her hands together.

"Yes, Riku! You're Sora's friend, right?" She laughed lightly, wow did she have a musical little laugh in her, "Yes, I remember now. Sora drew a picture of you and Kairi when we first met him, to show us what you looked like."

"Sora drew a picture?" Riku smirked slightly.

"Well, he attempted to, at least," The lady smiled, the atmosphere was getting a lot lighter than it had been. Then she turned her eyes on me. "Now you, I don't recognize you exactly…"

-but you recognize the whole getup, right lady? Great. That Yuffie chick was still trying to disembowel me with her eyes, and while I didn't mind girls staring at me (who would, am I right?) this was getting a little unnerving. I tried to ignore her and gave the brown-haired lady a wavery grin.

"Hey, I'm Demyx," I lifted my hand in a sad attempt at a wave. The lady looked at me closely, like she was trying to figure out what I was made of or something, and hey, I could answer that, but then she smiled a little and folded her hands in front of her.

"My name is Aerith, and this is Yuffie. You are both welcome to stay here as long as you need to," The lady said, ignoring the sudden "what?" from the dagger eyed girl next to her.

"You feel it too, don't you?" Riku said suddenly, giving her a curious look. Aerith's smile faded a little, and she nodded her head.

"Yes, the darkening of the worlds, the feeling of… incompleteness," Aerith sighed, then looked at the both of us. "We'll have plenty of time to talk in the morning, now you should both get some rest, you look worn out."

Riku got a defiant look suddenly, and how he was managing to keep plowing through everything, I don't know. When did the guy sleep? Seriuosly! I turned to him and put my hands on my hips and gave him a very critical look.

"She's right, you do look worn out," I said, frowning. He looked at me like I was crazy. "Really, when do you sleep? Or eat? Or, for that matter, when do you-"

"Okay," Riku held up a hand to stop me, "Okay, I get it. A break is fine."

"I'm sure Lea would like to speak to you as well, and he won't be off duty until the morning," Aerith said. She looked like she was trying to hold back a bigger smile than the one she had on. "I'm afraid there's a shortage of beds – " and she looked around a little, man the house was tiny – "but there are a few decent couches over by the fireplace for you two."

I looked over towards the living area part of the front room. There were two really nice plush couches standing around a wooden coffee table. A stone fireplace was in the wall across from them, the grate closed. A few pictures stood on the mantle above it, and a big vase with flowers stood on the coffee table.

"Thanks for letting us stay," Riku said. Yuffie let out a huffy breath and spun around on her heel.

"I'm getting back to work," She announced and walked off into the hallway, stomping angrily. Aerith looked after her with an amused grin, then turned back to look at us.

"Down the hall is the kitchen, and the bathroom is the first door on the right. If you need me, I'll be upstairs with Yuffie," Aerith said. She had such a nice voice, all melody, you know? There was something special about that lady. I nodded to her, and Riku thanked her again, and then she was gone through the hallway too.

I walked over to one of the couches and dropped onto it. It was one awesome couch, just the right amount of firm and bouncy. Not that it really mattered much to me, I wasn't exactly needing sleep, and my so-called body wasn't going to get anything out of the awesomeness that was that couch, but that didn't mean I couldn't appreciate it.

"This is an awesome couch," I said, looking over at Riku with a grin. He sauntered over to the other couch and dropped onto it.

"Wow." He said after a moment, and I nodded seriously.

"Right?" I sighed, and slouched low against the couch back. For a long moment there was silence. I stared at the pictures on the mantle, rectangles filled with people who looked like they were actually enjoying themselves. Trees and stuff and grins and smiles. I propped my feet up on the coffee table and crossed my arms, that weird whirlpool feeling twisting sluggishly through my insides. There was a group picture standing at the middle, and I could recognize Aerith and Yuffie standing there, along with a gruff looking older guy and a younger guy with kind-of emo hair and a scar across his face. They all looked, happy, I guess. Content. Peaceful?

"You going to sleep?" Riku muttered, and I looked over to see he had turned onto his side on the couch, curling up a little, his arm under his head. I shrugged.

"Don't really need to," I said, staring at the toe of my boot. Riku shifted on the couch.

"Hn… you have to get tired, though…" Riku said. He sounded like he was about to fall asleep.

"Not really… More like a mental thing, you know? Just lose focus," I explained. With a sigh I stood up.

"Where're you going?" Riku asked. I shrugged.

"Bathroom," I said, and he gave me a curious look. "Need to change out the water, or it gets all stagnated and icky and stuff."

He gave me strange look as I walked off towards the hallway. Bathroom's first door on the right, I reminded myself and looked around the hallway. Door to the right was right there, across from a staircase leading upstairs. Further down the hallway I could see a darkened room, the kitchen. I didn't need anything from there, and I headed into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. Of course, I closed it before I turned on the light and found myself in pitch black darkness because the bathroom didn't have a window. Great. I fumbled around the wall for a second, looking for a light switch, before giving myself a mental slap and opening the door into the hallway again. Duh. With the hallway's light I found the switch and turned it on, shutting the door behind me again.

It was pretty damn obvious this place was owned by a girl, let me tell you that. The shower curtain was a pale green with flowers on it and the rugs were a similar pale green color, and pretty fluffy. The walls were wallpapered with flowered, er, wallpaper, and there was a boatload and half of bath stuff and hair products and just tons and tons of stuff. I looked through the things standing on a little shelf across from the sink for a few minutes. Conditioner and shampoo, both mango scented, and three different kinds of body wash, all foaming. Then there was the body scrub and the face scrub and the hand scrub and wow, I didn't know you could scrub so many parts of your body, seriously, and really, if you had a body scrub, then couldn't you use it on your face and hands too? I mean, they were part of your body, right? Whatever, I put the bottles back and found that there were just as many different types of lotions as there were scrubs. Really?

I rolled my eyes and turned around, fully prepared to give the medicine cabinet a similar looksie and came face to face with the mirror. Yeah. Well, I wasn't expecting it. I mean, I hadn't exactly been taking good looks of my reflections in the water. I didn't know why, maybe some stupid feeling I'd gotten, I don't know, _myself_ wrong? Like, I didn't remember me right? Except, I guess I did. I guess I remembered myself a little too well actually. I looked just like I remembered, dirty blond faux-mullet-whatever-hawked hair fading to a dull sort of brown at the roots, stupid blue-green eyes that could never agree on matching (seriously, this time it was the right that was more blue and the left that was more green), and the constant kicked-dog look that I'd tried to lose forever but just couldn't, dammit. You'd think I'd be able to remember some sort of better version of myself, but nope. Not me. Great. I grimaced, geez I was pale. Like, an unhealthy sort of pale. Ha, healthy, unhealthy. It didn't look that great. Still, I thought I could work with it. I turned my head a little on put on my best grin-slash-smirk. Bam. Okay, so I wasn't exactly James-Freaking-Dean, but I wasn't all that bad, either. Sure.

I reached a hand up to fix my 'hawk, because god damn there were always these stupid little pieces of hair that would just go all wonky, and felt my fingers just merge into the water of it instead of running through my hair. Right. Water. I frowned and gave the me in the mirror a glare before looking down and dropping my hands to the faucet knobs. Right for hot, left for cold. I turned both on and let the water run a little before sticking my hands under the stream. Now, let me tell you, house water running through miles or whatever of metal pipes and a filtration center thing before that isn't exactly awesome water, especially after they do the chlorine thing and other stuff to get bacteria out of it or whatever. I mean, chemicals? In my water? No thanks. Still, it was better than just walking around with the water load I had, that was slowly but consistently gathering up dust and dirt from the air and ground as I walked and just becoming a total freaking mess. Chlorine and chems or not, clean water was refreshing, and I worked the murky stuff out of me and down the drain. It really was murky, a nasty faded gray-brown color. I grimaced, but it was nice feeling the dirt and stuff leave and clean water takes its place, like it was easier to focus then, easier to really feel my shape and stuff.

I let the water run a little while longer, just let the stream pass through my hands. Kind of weird, the way it just connected into the fake black leather of my fake hands and just fell out of them on the other side. With a sigh I turned the faucets off and turned away, avoiding looking into the mirror. I'd thought the water change would have helped with that weird swirling feeling I'd been having, but it didn't. I walked over to the door and pulled it open, only to find myself face to face with Ms. Huffy – er, Yuffie. She glared at me as soon as she realized who it was, her hands clenching on her sides. I was totally ready to just walk by her and back into the front room but then I thought, hey, do I pass up chances? Well, yeah, sometimes, but not this time. Instead I leaned a little against the doorframe, crossed my arms, and put on that grin-slash-smirk I'd just practiced. Her frown faltered a bit, and her fists unclenched slightly. I raised an eyebrow slightly, just a tiny bit, and looked her straight in the eyes. That frown was starting to look a little dazed-like, and her cheeks darkened, just a little, just barely.

Ha, I thought, still got it.

Didn't last long. Her frown came back at full power, her eyes blazing, and she shoved past me roughly and stomped into the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind her so hard it pushed me into the hallway. Damn, testy ain't she? I looked at the door curiously for a moment, then shrugged and headed back into the front room. Riku was dead asleep, and I settled down on my couch, laying on my back and staring up at the ceiling. Nothing to do now but wait.

****

Morning came slow, real slow. The color of the drawn shades started lightening up little by little, and I heard people moving around upstairs. Riku woke up, stumbling to his feet and looking over at me sleepily. I gave him a nod for good morning and then turned my attention back on the spider spinning its web in the corner. OCD spider, seriously, it'd get its web half-way done and then it would do something to it and mess it all up and start over again. Three hours, that's how long it was doing its little web deal. Riku wandered off, towards the hallway I guessed, and I heard some voices from that direction. I watched the spider stop again, pulling at web strings and then dashing to the wall again. Stupid spider.

Three knocks sounded sharp on the front door. I jerked a little, surprised, then sat up and peered over the back of the couch at the door. Footsteps came from the hallway, and then Aerith was walking into the room, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She gave me a quick grin, then opened the door.

"Come in," She said, and stepped back. Lea walked in, running a hand through his hair and looking around quickly. He spotted me and seemed to relax a little, and that weird whirlpool thing I'd finally gotten to calm down sped up again, all twisty and rotten feeling. Heh, but you know, steel-gray-blue wasn't really his color.

"Are you hungry?" Aerith asked, looking him over with a critical eye. Yup, she was the motherly type, that lady.

"You're seriously asking me that?" Lea said, cocking an eyebrow and grinning. Aerith shook her head at him and grinned herself, then looked over at me.

"How about you?" She asked.

"I'm good," I said, grinning at her. She was nice. I think I liked her. Not, like, like-like, just like. Like, like. Wait. What?

"Are you sure?" She gave me a curious look, and I nodded.

"Long story," I offered, and she give me that curious look a little longer, then just nodded and with one last smile at the both of us walked back to the kitchen.

So, yeah… Lea looked after her, then he turned his gaze on me. I looked at him. For a while we just looked at each other. In silence. Yeah… talk about awkward. After a little more silence he walked over and sat down on the couch opposite mine, and I turned around to sit like a normal person and looked at him.

"Demyx?" He said, or asked, kind of looking like he didn't believe what he was saying. He had this weird glint in his eyes.

"That's my name, don't wear it out or you'll have to get me a new one," I said with a grin. Cheesy, that's me.

"It really is you," He said, all disbelief, but he got a grin on his face and… and he sort of looked, happy or something. I don't know. That twisty feeling reared up again, and it wasn't helping me with trying to figure out why he was looking at me like I was a freaking miracle or something.

"Well, yeah, there's only one me, right? Or, like, well, the water clones, but they're not exactly me-me, in a me sort of sense," I said, trying to think if I had phrased that right. Probably not. Lea just kept grinning, sort of letting a bit of a smirk slip in there, and leaned against the back of the couch. I don't know, I wasn't feeling the grin, and that whirlpool in the middle of me was growing claws and just scratching away at my insides, or at something else, since I didn't have insides, and just gnawing away and stuff. It's like I said, you know, some memories are just too faded and I don't want to deal with them and some are just sharp and they come all by themselves and then there are just some things that aren't memories and aren't feelings but they're like, I dunno, associations or something, and they're there if there's a need for them, but if not, then they just sort of fade away a bit and I don't really pick up on them until – wham! – whatever it is shows up again, and they just sort of squirm their way back into my head.

Sort of like right now.

"Oh," I said, and grinned. Realization is nice, and that claw-filled whirlpool was swirling in a different sort of matter, and I remembered now why it was a dull, throbbing sort of ache somewhere deep inside.

"What?" Lea asked, giving me a curious look. I grinned brightly at him.

"I just remembered I hate you." I paused. "Well, I guess, maybe not… you, or well, in a sense… Hm, how does that work now?"

I tried to think on that to figure it out, but I was a little distracted by the sudden changes Lea's expression went through – a detached sort of confusion, a shocked sort of understanding, a fiery sort of aggravation that reminded me a little too much of Number XIII, and a weird sort of resignation. He leaned forward then, elbows on knees, and gave me this long look that was, well, really hard to read. I had no idea what he was thinking then, and I was kind of glad to see him about to say something, because then at least I'd know what the hell he wanted, but that was the moment someone decided to walk into the room.

Both of us looked up and over at the hallway. Aerith was walking in with two plates of steaming food, Riku right behind her with his own plate. She walked over to sit on the opposite couch and handed one of the plates over to Lea, and Riku sat down on the couch I was on. Man. Omelets, hash browns, bacon. Bacon! I glared at Riku, and even though he wasn't looking at me I knew he noticed because the bastard made a show of chopping up the oh-so-perfectly-crispy pieces of bacon with his fork and chewing each one for a good long while. I resisted the urge to hit him and make him spill his food and just sat there glaring at him. Someone cleared their throat, and I looked over at the other couch to see Aerith giving me an odd look and Lea busy shoving his food around his plate and not looking at anyone.

"Are you sure you don't want anything, Demyx?" Aerith asked. And! And she used my name. Wow. I did like her.

"It's okay, I don't eat," I answered, grinning. She wrinkled her forehead, looking a little concerned, and lady, don't do that, that'll give you wrinkles. "I'm water."

Well, that didn't explain things any better, she just looked even more confused, and Lea looked up at me with the same confused expression she had.

"He actually is water," Riku explained further. Nope, they still didn't get it. Riku licked his fork clean and gave me a look.

"No, no, that is a jerky thing to do, you jerk. Stop thinking about it," I said, holding up a warning finger. He smirked, pointing the fork at me and making like he was going to stab me with it. I jerked back, glaring at him. "I said no!"

"Fine," He snickered, and went back to eating. I turned to the other two to find them giving the both of us those looks that said they were considering whether or not to call the funny house to take us away. I grinned at them and tried to think of a way to show them what I meant, and then I figured that there wasn't really any way to do it that didn't involve drenching everything, so I settled on just telling them.

"So, seriously, I'm just… water, now. Like, a water clone!" I pointed at Lea, "Only, me. As a water clone."

"…so that's why you fell apart…" Lea muttered, twisting his fork in the mangled remains of his omelet. It didn't look like he'd eaten too much of it, and, really, if this was how he ate, then it's no wonder he was a freaking beanpole.

"Do you mean, your body is… made of water?" Aerith asked, still apparently trying to understand what I was talking about.

"Yeah, see, technically, I don't have a body," I said, still grinning. Man, sometimes I really was way too cheerful for my own good, maybe that's what was throwing them off.

"He lost his body when he fought Sora," Riku explained all normal toned. My cheerfulness faltered a little. Keyblades and thundaga and…

"So what, you're possessing water now, or something?" Lea asked, looking at me.

"Pretty much," I said, still not able to read him. Dammit, I could never read him. No, I could never read Axel, but I guess it just got transferred over onto his somebody now.

"Can you still control water?" He asked. His eyes were getting a sharp glint to them.

"A little," I said, trying to figure out what he was going for here. I didn't like that look.

"Sitar?" He asked, dropping his fork onto his plate.

"…no…" I said, voice dropping lower. He smirked, eyes glinting nastily. I narrowed my eyes at him. "What?"

"Nothing. I just never thought you had the ability to be even more useless than you were," He said, smirking wider as I glared daggers at him. The damned whirlpool inside me was dragging those freaking claws all around, deep and ragged. Bastard.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aerith giving him a shocked look. Apparently Ms. Nice had no idea how much of an asshole firecrotch could be.

"We're looking for King Mickey," Riku cut in through the sudden, awkward, toasty silence. Aerith straightened up and turned her attention on him. "We used the same portal he did to leave his world, and it led us here."

"I'm sorry, Riku, but I don't think he was here. No one had mentioned seeing him, at least," Aerith looked thoughtful.

"He was here," Lea said suddenly, putting his plate down on the coffee table. He leaned back on the couch and gave a quick glance in Aerith's direction, and she was giving him this what-are-you-sure? Sort of look. "He told me not to tell anyone."

"Why?" Aerith asked, then turned slightly to face him better. "And where is he now?"

"I don't know why, but he didn't get to do much here," Lea shrugged and lifted a hand to the back of his neck. Aerith gave him another curious look, and he sighed, "The Keyblade."

"Oh, of course. Everyone knows he is a Keybearer." Aerith said softly. Riku put his now empty plate on the coffee table and exchanged a curious look with me. Aerith saw our looks, and put her own plate down.

"What does being a Keybearer have anything to do with it?" Riku asked, frowning.

"There was… an incident, a while ago. A sudden darkness came, very similar to what had happened when the heartless first started appearing." Aerith started to explain. "For a while it was just… darkness. Then people reported strange things, attacks by unseen creatures, whispered voices in the alleyways. No one knew what was happening. One day, the darkness disappeared… and everything escalated."

Aerith paused, a sad sort of look coming to her face.

"People began disappearing, randomly, and then one day there was an attack on the castle. A great vortex of darkness appeared, swirling with powerful winds. It tore through the castle walls, deflecting any weapons and magic that was used against it. It looked as if it was searching for something…" Aerith shook her head. "After a long battle, it went away by itself, the swirling wind receding into the vortex itself. For a moment, the darkness seemed to part..."

Her voice trailed off, and she looked at Lea, almost like she was afraid to keep talking. Lea was fiddling with a strap on his uniform pants, but he looked up to see both Riku and me looking at him. He took a breath.

"The Castle Guard Unit was the closest to the vortex during the battle, and when the darkness receded." Lea placed his hands on his knees and looked straight at us. "There was a figure there, in the darkness. It was hard to see any details, the only thing we could see was its glowing eyes, and that it… it was holding…"

Lea looked away for a moment, then turned back to us.

"It was holding a Keyblade," he said quietly. I saw Riku tense up, and I frowned. What? A Keyblade? I remembered that black vortex thing a little too well, seriously, but I didn't remember any Keyblade. I was pretty sure I would.

"A Keyblade? Are you sure?" Riku asked, voice getting this hard edge to it. Lea nodded, and Aerith did as well.

"The fact that it was a Keyblade was kept from most of the regular populace, but all the Guard Units in Radiant Garden were informed," Aerith said.

"Yeah, told that if they saw anyone with anything even resembling a Keyblade, they should bring them in for questioning," Lea said, and leaned back against the couch again. "Of course, everyone got super uptight about it, and they tend to bring in any strangers they run in to that can't offer a good explanation for why they're here."

"And The King, since he's a keybearer…" Riku started.

"And a known keybearer at that, he didn't even get the chance to visit our wonderful holding cells," Lea said, leaning an elbow on the couch arm.

"What happened to him?" Aerith asked, folding her hands on her knees. Lea shrugged, scuffing his boot against the floor.

"Dunno, they try not to tell me too much, especially when it has to do with keybearers," Lea muttered. Aerith got a knowing look, and was about to say something, but Lea held up a hand suddenly. "But, I have a good idea about what might have happened."

"Do you, now?" Riku asked dryly. Lea gave him a look, then leaned forward in his seat.

"They don't talk about it with me, but they talk about it with each other, and if they happen to not notice that I'm within hearing range, well, that's not my problem…" Lea grinned a little wickedly. "See, there's a rumor going around about another world, people are saying that it's the place where the Keyblades come from. I tend to believe them, hell, I've met keybearers from there before. Supposedly no one's had contact with that world for years now. Thing is, there's a lot of correspondence coming in and going out ever since that vortex appeared, and I managed to slip into the sorting facility once without anyone realizing it. And what do you think I found?"

"Lea, you don't mean that…" Aerith started, looking at him in surprise. He grinned again, pointing a finger at her.

"That's right, there was mail there marked with that world's seal. No contact? More like, the higher ups here just didn't want anyone to know they were in contact with them. I mean, think about it," Lea cut off, well, all of us before we could ask the obvious question. "You have a whole world that's freaking out about outsiders coming in and wrecking the place, and a good quarter of the people knowing that whoever controlled the vortex had a Keyblade. You're not exactly going to be shouting in the streets that you're contacting a world that's been known to produce keybearers in the past, right?"

"And you think they sent the King there?" Riku asked, leaning towards Lea.

"Where else were you going to send someone with a Keyblade? Especially if you wanted to question him? Someplace where they had practice dealing with people like that, right?" Lea said, and leaned back against the couch, grinning all satisfied and stuff. Aerith sat there, looking like she was mulling things over, then nodded.

"That would make sense…" She looked at Lea, "Lea, do you think… when they deported Leon, do you think they might have sent him there too?"

"Maybe, they did want to find out what he knew about Sora and the Keyblade, and he wasn't talking," Lea's grin dropped a little and a musing look came to his eyes.

"Well, that's great and all," I spoke up, folding my arms behind my head. "Just, how're we going to get there?"

"Well, if anyone has a star map," Riku started, and gave me a pointed look.

"Yeah, duh, but what if no one does?" I said back, and frowned.

"I think Cid may be able to help…" Aerith began, and Lea nodded, and then suddenly there was a dull thud, and I jumped in my seat and everyone spun around to find the door had been shoved open – or blown open? – and someone dressed in a guards uniform was coming inside. Said someone took one look around, grinned wicked-nasty like, and held up a hand towards the doorway.

"I'll be out in a minute," He said, and after someone outside answered with a very serious "Yes, sir!" he waved his fingers at the door, and a gust of air swung it closed again.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" He advanced towards the couches, bringing a short lance up to rest over his shoulder, and Lea stood up, glaring at him. I scrunched down on the couch, but it was a little too late for that, right? Whatever – crazy glint in eyes, void black hair and dreads and freaky sideburns, that nasty smirk that looked like he was about to go for your jugular. I knew who it was. I didn't know if I was more angry over the fact that he so very obviously was a whole freaking being now, or scared about the fact that for a long, long moment he was looking at me with a look that screamed I-Have-Found-My-Prey-Item and promised pain. Endless pain. I tried to remember whether or not I had cleaned up the kitchen the last time I used it but I really, really couldn't remember and it was making me imagine horrible scenarios involving lances put into places they really weren't meant to be put in.

"Dilan, what are you doing here?" Lea growled, fists clenching at his sides. I looked at him, noticing something about their uniforms. Lea's was a bit plain, but Dilan's was a little more… decorated?

"Oh, Lea, is that how you speak to your commanding officer?" Dilan… Dilan? Dilan said, coming to stop near the couches and eyeing both me and Riku again. "Look at this, visiting the house of a known keybearer sympathizer, and helping to harbor outsiders as well. Tsk, tsk…"

"This… dammit, this is more important than politics," Lea was practically grinding his teeth now, glaring at the black haired man. Dilan wasn't fazed at all, and instead turned to look at me and Riku.

"I seem to recall that there was only one person brought in last night," He mused, giving Riku a long look He switched over to me after a moment, his grin widening and his eyes getting icier. "Demyx…"

I flinched at his voice, throwing my hands up in surrender.

"I swear I didn't mean to get the chocolate syrup everywhere, honest, and I was so totally using the bottle brush but it didn't want to fit in that stupid space between the cabinets and I would've used the handi-vac but I just didn't have time you know how Saix was with the mission stuff and I really didn't want to lose an arm that would just not have been cool –" My little rant of a monologue was cut off by Dilan's laugh and I stared up at him in, okay, total terror. The laugh – it either meant someone was going to be let off the hook, or someone was going to die. Please don't let it be the die laugh, please oh please oh please.

"It **is** you, isn't it?" Dilan said, with that same sort of weird grin thing Lea had given me when he'd practically said the same thing. What is wrong with these people. "What are you doing here, water boy?"

"Er… traveling?" I gave him a weak grin, and he chuckled. He looked like a freaking predator. Damn. Damn.

"Dilan, we have to get them off this world." Lea said, and I looked over to find him looking all barely-contained and stuff. Still having anger problems, maybe? Or at least management problems? Looked like it, the way he was gritting his teeth and clenching his fists. He obviously hadn't been expecting Xa- DILAN – to show up. Aerith had stood in the meantime, looking at Dilan with a stern sort of look in her eye, like there was no way anyone was going to budge her. Rock on, lady. I was a little too busy cringing away from the lance head that had suddenly been propped against the couch back next to my head.

"We?" Dilan raised an eyebrow, looking at Lea. There was some sort of professional rivalry going on here, and apparently things just didn't change between those two just because they got their hearts. Xaldin and Axel had never been on good terms, ever. Wind was just … crazy, and it tended to whip fire up like no one, seriously. I never wanted to get between the two before, and I totally did not want to get between them now.

"Look, just…" Lea cut himself off, looking like he was steeling himself up for something, then stalked forward, grabbed Dilan by the arm, and dragged him off to the other side of the room. Noises of protest, threatening tones, low angry whispers. I didn't try to pay attention and instead tried to stop feeling like a cat cornered by a mouse.

"Wow," Riku said, giving me a look. I glared at him.

"Yeah, yeah, well, you try spending, like, forever in a place with that guy," I hissed, "His idea of fun was popping up out of nowhere and trying to stab you like a pincushion."

Riku just shook his head and looked over to where Lea and Dilan were leading on a heated discussion. Aerith sighed, but she was looking a little worried.

"Dilan managed to get a higher position by convincing the Major that he had been tricked into joining the others in their experiments," Aerith explained quietly.

"What? And they believed him?" I gasped. I don't know what he was like before he lost his heart, but Xaldin was a freaking sadistic bastard with a nasty streak a mile wide. How the hell would anyone do anything other than throw him in a dark cell and toss away the key?

"Apparently, he can spin quite a tale when he wants to, and the Major gave him the benefit of the doubt," Aerith didn't look too happy about that, and it was kind of weird to see her be anything other than calm and nice and accepting. "Lea says he's not as bad as he comes out to be, just that he's very… determined."

I looked over at where Lea and Dilan were still arguing. Dilan was not looking happy at all, and Lea wasn't much better, and man oh man I hoped they had better control over their elements now than when they were Nobodies, because this place was really too small for an all out firestorm. Suddenly Dilan broke away, giving Lea a glare.

"Fine," He spat, then looked over at us with an icy, thoughtful look. He turned back to Lea after a moment. "Others in the unit are already suspecting you. The Major had already given orders for you to come in at five-hundred hours."

Dilan leaned towards Lea, that nasty grin back on his face.

"I suggest you work quickly, before anyone else gets it into their head to bring you in earlier themselves," Dilan spun around, stalking to the door and pulling it open, slamming it closed behind him. There were some voices murmuring behind the door, fading away quickly. Lea hurried back over to the couches, and Aerith looked up at him with a worried look.

"We've got ourselves some time," Lea said, staying standing instead of sitting down.

"Cid." Aerith said, her face getting a serious, hard look. "He had mentioned hiding his gummi ship before the regulations came into play. I haven't had much contact with him lately, but there's a chance that his ship might still be hidden."

"And you think he'll let us use it?" Riku asked, not sounding too sure. Aerith nodded, and gave a short laugh.

"Tell him it'll get the Major mad, and he'll drag it out of hiding with his own two hands." She smiled, a small smile but still a smile.

"This isn't gonna make trouble for you, is it?" I asked, feeling a little weird about it. Wasn't like a cared, really, but she was a pretty nice lady, you know? Lea gave me a strange look, but Aerith smiled.

"Oh, I've dealt with worse, don't worry," Aerith said. Her expression grew serious again, and she turned to Lea. "You know where to find Cid, right?"

"Sure, they gave his info out to the regular guard units too," Lea said. He was looking agitated, probably worried about Dilan's threats holding true. Aerith nodded.

"Good, give me a few minutes, I'll have some supplies ready for you, as well as a note to Cid explaining the situation so you won't have to waste any time," Aerith stood up and brushed out her skirts before heading towards the hallway to the back of the house. I looked over at Riku, who was looking like he was trying to figure out the mysteries of the world, and then at Lea, who looked like he was about ready to do something seriously drastic, like I don't know, run off setting things on fire or something.

"Gummi ship?" I asked quietly. I'd never been in a gummy ship before. Was it like a zeppelin, or something? "That duck and dog talked about one too… What's a gummi ship?"

"Seriously?" Lea gave me a look, like I was the stupidest person he'd ever met. I should be used to it, but I glared at him all the same.

"Seriously, what it is?" I looked at Riku, who I figured would be not so mean.

"It's a ship made out of gummi blocks, the stuff that makes up the invisible barriers between worlds." Riku explained, "When the material gets broken up, it breaks into blocks that are visible and useable. People who know how can construct ships out of these blocks that are able to pass through the world barriers."

"Oh. Okay, that's pretty cool," I said, grinning. "That's like space travel! Awesome!"

"It's not _like_ space travel, it _is_ space travel," Lea said, rolling his eyes. I ignored him, well, I tried to. Aerith came back then, carrying two large bags and an envelope. She placed the bags on the coffee table and handed the envelope to Lea.

"Give that to Cid when you find him. You shouldn't have any trouble getting him to show you where the gummi ship is. The problem will be getting it out of hiding and out of this world." Aerith said, and looked at all of us one by one.

"Don't worry, we'll be out of here in no time," Lea said, pocketing the envelope and hefting one bag. Aerith smiled at him.

"Of course. Oh, and Lea, if you do happen to find Leon," Aerith's smile faded a little, but then it brightened again, all hopeful, "Tell him we're all thinking about him and that we all know he'll be back soon."

"Sure thing," Lea said, grinning. Riku stood up, and I did too, and Aerith looked us all over again.

"Well, boys, I guess this is good bye," She said, then laughed lightly. "For now, at least."

I doubted we'd be seeing her again, I mean, traveling the worlds and all that stuff wasn't exactly a safe sort of thing, but, you know? Truth? I wouldn't mind it. I wouldn't mind coming back here at all.


	8. Motorcade of Meant to Be

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and characters copyright Square Enix and such people. Not me.

A/N:

Yes. Er. This was supposed to be longer. It was not cooperating.

Next chapter will come whenever. I'm sure I lost like EVERYONE because of my stupid random moments of vanishing but I hope that whoever reads will enjoy.

ENJOY

This one was kind of killer. The next world will be lots of fun, trust me. TRUST ME.

**Thanks to everyone who reviews I love you SO MUCH.**

It's seriously starting to look that I'm only writing this for you two, really, but I don't mind. I hope you enjoy. :D

**Review yes yes?

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_Motorcade of Meant-to-be's

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The second we got out the door Lea had us running for a nearby side street as fast as we could go. Not like anyone was around, it was pretty early, but I guess he just didn't want to risk it. I could care less, sure, running wasn't my thing, but hey. I'd been through worse, and a little exercise never hurt anyone. We headed down the side street as quietly as we could, Lea stopping at where it crossed with another street and looking around the edge to see if anyone was around. Riku dodged to the other side to check there, and me? I ended up with my back to the wall, waiting for them to finish checking things out. We were moving on soon, though, and through areas where there were people starting to move around. Lea had us dodging into alleyways and going down empty side streets as often as he could.

Soon enough we were at the wall of the city. A very solid, thick wall. A very solid, thick wall with no doorway, as far as I could see. We stopped at the bottom of it, and I looked up towards the top. Fifty feet, easy. Man, why couldn't I teleport? So much easier.

"So, what do we do now?" I asked, looking over at Lea. He had his hands on his hips and was eyeing the wall critically. And he wasn't responding. I looked at Riku, and he shrugged, then crossed his arms and waited. I sighed and eyed the wall again. Yup. Definitely solid, and definitely not climbable.

"All right," Lea said finally, and walked towards the wall. I watched him curiously, noticing for the first time he had this nifty carrier thing for his chakram on his back. Cool. He walked up to the wall, and held his hand out to touch it. Flames burst out from under his palm, circling around his hand as he pulled it across the face of the wall. A thick line of glowing red appeared on the wall, and the stones started…er, melting. Or something, something was happening, and then Lea took his hand off of the wall and stepped back to let the wall keep… dissolving. Soon enough there was a narrow doorway in the wall, and I could see grassy hills past it, littered with large boulders and stones and stuff.

"Woah," I said, and Lea turned to face us with a grin.

"What just happened?" Riku asked, stepping forward to look at the doorway closely.

"Emergency escape route," Lea explained, "It's activated by elemental magic, and only if it's cast in the right spot."

"And you knew about this?" I asked, stepping closer to the opening. The sides of the doorway were clean-cut and smooth.

"Read about it in one of the security reports," Lea shrugged, "Memorized where all of the doorways are placed just in case it's needed some day."

We stood there for a little longer, admiring Lea's accomplishment.

"Er… is it me, or is the doorway thing getting smaller?" I asked after a long moment. There was no response from the other two for a little while, during which I could swear the doorway was getting narrower.

There was sudden cursing from Lea, and I took that as a sign to get my ass through that doorway. Well, apparently all of us had the same idea, and three guys trying to get through a doorway that was way too small was not a good idea. It was an almost-stuck situation, especially since the doorway was still getting smaller and smaller. I grimaced, and before things got any tighter than they were, I pushed myself forward from between the other two and let my form go. I felt the water I was made of splash across the ground to gather in puddles, and mentally grimaced at the thought of how much dirt and nasty stuff it'd be picking up. Ugh. Waiting just a moment, I reformed and found myself on the other side of the rapidly shrinking doorway, with Riku and Lea standing in front of me a bit further out from the wall.

"So, we made it, huh?" I grinned at the other two. Riku smirked, and Lea gave me a weird look. Still not used to the whole water thing, I guessed. I looked back to see the doorway melt shut, the wall smooth and untouched again. I frowned a little, and turned back to look at Lea. "Hey, there isn't any type of alarm or something that lets people know the doorway's been opened, is there?"

"No," Lea said quickly, grinning. Then a thoughtful look crossed his face. "Well, I don't think there is…"

"Let's move. Either way, we need to get out of here soon, before the guards start to really look for us," Riku said, and I nodded. "Where do we go from here?"

Lea looked around for a moment, then nodded in a direction.

"Down that way, over the Stony Hills. It'll be a bit longer and rougher than taking the road, but it'll be harder for anyone to track us," Lea said, and started off. Riku walked off just behind him, and I followed along, humming a random tune and taking the chance to look around. Radiant Garden was built on a higher spot of ground, and there were hills all around it. Further off to one side I could see something dark standing out on the horizon. It didn't look like anything natural, like a mountain or a forest or anything like that. It had too many angles and tall shapes and stuff.

"Hey, what's that?" I asked, pointing over to the shape. Lea looked back at me, then towards the horizon. For a moment his face grew dark, then he turned to look ahead quickly.

"Just ruins," He said, his voice strangely toneless.

"Of what?" I asked, still looking at the dark outline on the horizon.

"A city," He answered, still in that toneless voice. I looked towards the other two, and Riku glanced back at me with a questioning look.

"What city?" I probed further. Lea sighed. Annoyed? I always did have a knack for annoying Axel. I guess Lea's not that much different.

"It was a city called Midgar, and now it's ruins, and no one goes there, and no, we're not going to go there either. No, I won't tell you about the city, or about why it's in ruins, or why no one goes there." Lea said, and yeah, definitely annoyed. I tried to think of a different question from those that he had answered. No luck.

We went on in silence, and Lea was not kidding about the way being rough. Stones and boulders and dips in the grounds and little ditches and nature was just not being nice to us. I skidded down a steep hillside and followed the others up the side of the next hill, glancing back towards the slowly fading outline of the ruins on the horizon. Midgar. I wondered what kind of place it was, and just why it was that Lea didn't want to talk about it.

I wondered when we were going to get to this Cid guy finally, we'd been walking for ages. Okay, not ages, but still, Radiant Gardens was fading in the distance and I'd lost count of all the hills we'd crossed a long, long time ago.

"Why're we all so quiet?" I asked, looking ahead at the other two. Riku chuckled and Lea turned his head to look at me, eyebrow raised. I frowned, no snappy retort? No sarcastic comeback? Lea turned back to face the direction we were walking, and I sighed. It was a weird feeling. Dammit, if he looked more different, then I wouldn't keep expecting him to respond like Axel. It didn't entirely make sense to me, though, the way he was acting different. I mean, the only difference between Nobodies and their Somebodies was the lack of a heart, right? So our personalities and stuff should say the same, no matter whether we had our heart or not. Or maybe the lack of a heart changed our personalities? I couldn't really remember what I was like before I was a Nobody – okay, lies. Lies, I admit it, but I didn't really like thinking about it, so I just never did, and that was pretty much the same thing. Still, if I did let myself think about what I was like, just a little, I didn't think I'd changed that much. Not, not really.

"We're there," Lea said suddenly, and I blinked and looked around. Woah, did I space out or something? Probably, since we were no longer in the hills with their boulders and stuff, and instead we were at a series of cliffs and sheer drops that led down to a rocky valley. I looked around at the sharp stacks of rocks around us.

"Those are some crazy rocks," I muttered, turning around to follow the line of one cliff-rock-stack thing.

"Nature can be pretty amazing sometimes," Riku said, and I turned to see him looking out over the rock valley with a peaceful, thoughtful look on his face.

"Riku, are you a nature boy?" I asked, grinning. He looked at me, cocking one eyebrow. "Yeah, you are, you're a total nature boy. You're all about mountain hiking and snorkeling and rainforest adventures…"

"Hmm, a rainforest adventure sounds like fun…" Riku mused, tapping his chin thoughtfully with one finger.

"I prefer snorkeling myself…" I said, and Riku gave a serious, agreeing nod.

"I want to go to a volcano," Lea spoke up suddenly.

"Somehow I'm not surprised," I smirked.

"Can't bring Demyx, he'd evaporate." Riku said, and Lea nodded in agreement.

"Fine with me, I don't want to see any stupid volcanoes anyway." I said, crossing my arms. Lea looked slightly offended.

"Volcanoes aren't stupid, they're _awesome_." He said, hand flourish on the "awesome". I thought about it for a bit.

"Hmmm… Nope. Stupid." I grinned brightly at Lea's ticked off expression. Riku was chuckling as quietly as he could.

"That's that then." Lea said, and turned on his heel to stalk off towards a large rock formation. "We're going to go see a volcano."

"Hey!" I called out after him, "I'll… I'll get all steamy and fog-like! Probably!"

"Oh well, sucks to be you," Lea shot back, and disappeared around the edge of the formation. Riku shook his head, still grinning, and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Come on," He said, and I frowned, but followed him over to where Lea disappeared. The formation was smack dab at the edge of the cliff that dropped to the valley below, but to the right of where we stood there was a dark cave opening.

"Oooh, spooky," I said eerily, and Riku pushed me ahead of him past the opening.

There was a series of stairs cut out of the rock under our feet, and we headed down a passage that was brighter than I thought it would be. Something glistened up where the sides of the passage met the ceiling, some sort of moss or something. I don't know, I was never too good with the plant stuff. Marly's thing, not mine, you know?

Lea was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs, and motioned for us to follow him as soon as he saw us.

"We're coming in the back way, the front of his workshop is out where the road passes by, so he can get his supplies in with little problem." Lea explained as he led the way further in. "Cid might be a little miffed about the intrusion, so don't be surprised by his, heh… colorful language."

I chuckled slightly as we moved further down the corridor. Before long it widened out a bit, and we came to a large steel door with a wheel thing instead of a normal handle. Lea took hold of the wheel, and bracing himself he jerked it into motion. It screeched loud and started to turn slowly, but soon enough it was turning faster, and the sound of metal sliding across metal came from somewhere within the door. Lea turned the wheel until it stopped, then pulled at the door hard. It obviously hadn't been used often, but it started swinging out.

Lea led the way past the door, and pulled it shut behind us, turning a wheel thing on the other side to lock it. There was another corridor before us, and the sound of loud machinery and banging and even louder music drifted down to us. Ugh, I grimaced. I liked rock music, but this just sounded like a bunch of baboons slamming guitars into a drum set. We moved further on and came out in a large warehouse-like area containing machines and pipes and tables and all sorts of crazy mechanical stuff. I couldn't even take everything in, there was so much. Well, that, and the crazy monkeys-on-meth music was driving me crazy.

Lea smirked as he walked past me and towards the farther end of the warehouse, and me and Riku followed behind him. There was a large propeller hanging overhead, supported on thick wires hanging off a large crane, and further on there was a large piece of sheet metal being formed into… er, something by a large, loud machine. Banging was coming from another part of the place. We eventually reached a large work bench, an old beat up radio sitting at one end of it, holding down what looked like blueprints. An older-sort-of-middle-aged blonde-haired man was working at something on the workbench.

Lea was standing a little ways off, apparently considering his options of interrupting the man. After a moment he walked over to the radio and hit a button, and thankfully – thankfully – the monkey-music stopped. The man whipped his head around to look who was touching his radio, and I could swear I heard him growl. He gave the redhead a long hard look.

"The fuck ya want, red?" The man said, then glanced over at Riku and me. His expression grew darker, and he gave the both of us a long, hard look.

"We need your help, Cid," Lea said, leaning back against the workbench and looking over the blueprints on it. I fidgeted a little, and shot Riku a glance. He looked totally relaxed, of course. Of course. Like what, this was all just gonna fall in place? Whatever.

"Who're these guys?" Cid nodded in our direction, but his eyes were lingering on me way too long. He knew who I was.

"Friends of mine," Lea said, grinning. Cid humphed and crossed his arms across his chest.

"I see that," He muttered, looking straight at me as he said it. Great. Wonderful. I gave him a grin, but that didn't seem to help.

"Riku's a keybearer, and Demyx and I used to… work together," Lea explained, "Cid, we need to get off this world."

"So what're ya bothering me for?" Cid grumbled, fixing the redhead with a stern look. "Defense Systems sent me fifteen fucking perimeter bots to repair. I don't have time for yer crap."

"We pissed the Major off," Lea added offhand, crossing his arms. Cid raised an eyebrow, and suddenly his frown transformed into a sly grin.

"Did ya? Heh, typical I guess," Cid laughed, slapping Lea on the shoulder hard enough that the redhead stumbled. "So what kinda shit did ya pull to get the Major after yer ass?"

"Nothing much, assisting a runaway prisoner, leaving my post, conspiring with a keybearer," Lea shrugged and grinned.

"And now you need me to get yer asses out of trouble, right?" Cid turned back to face Riku and me, giving us calculating looks. "Well, at least they don't look like total losers."

I frowned and glanced over at Riku. Mr. Cool was rolling his eyes. Lea chuckled and pushed himself away from the workbench.

"We need to jump worlds," Lea said casually. Cid grinned wickedly all of a sudden, freaky look on that guy.

"I got just what you need," Cid laughed sharply, then started walking off briskly towards one side of the warehouse place. We passed half a boat looking thing the size of a small cabin and a stack of wheels of various sizes. Insane. Cid stopped at the wall, right in front of a skid covered in scrap metal. Fixing his gloves, he leaned against the side of the pile and shoved hard. The skid shuddered, then slid with a loud scraping metal on concrete sound, moving a good few feet.

"What the hell?" I was gaping, seriously, how the hell did he move that thing? It had to weigh more than, like, all of us. Together. Like, quadruple us! Cid stood back, grinning like he was all awesome and stuff. Which he was. Holy shit.

"It's on wheels," Lea said in a loud whisper. Cid's smile fell into a glare, and he muttered off a string of curses before leaning over and pulling at a large ring stuck to the floor. With a loud creak he pulled up a square trapdoor and heaved it to the side.

"C'mon, and watch yer heads," Cid started down the hole, and the rest of us followed. I held back till the end, following Riku down the iron rungs sticking out of the side of the tunnel thing. Around ten feet down the ladder ended and we dropped into a low corridor.

A light flickered, then glowed softly somewhere ahead of us in the half-gloom.

"Keep close and watch yer step, there're rats down here and the bastards got a nasty bite on 'em," Cid said, pointing the flashlight ahead of him and heading off down the corridor. We followed close behind, the corridor so low we couldn't walk straight. Heh, sucks to be Lea.

A few times I heard something skittle by across the corridor, something furry and with giant razor teeth, no doubt. I grimaced and tried not to look at the ground as we walked, not that I could see too much of it in the gloom. I felt it, though, dirty and slimy and covered in weird… crunchy stuff. What the hell was this place?  
"What the hell is this place?" I said out loud as well.

"Old sewer system for the warehouse," Cid called back from the head of the line. We were getting to a t-intersection, from the looks of it, and he took a right turn and headed on. "Made a new one when I renovated the place but I kept this one around, just in case."

A few more yards down we came to a grate in the sewer walls, and Cid popped it open and led the way through. Ugh, at least it wasn't a teeny-tiny grate, but like a normal sized one, but still. Still, we had to squeeze through. I could just feel the icky slimy dirty stuff getting all mingly with my water.

A few moments after we entered… whatever it was we entered, a bright light flooded the area. My eyes were blinded, but then I realized that damn, I'm just water, and they really shouldn't be affected like that, and I could see again. A-ha. Perception is what makes the rules, I got it now.

We were in a giant room, it was huge, and it looked like it was all carved out of the stone of the cliff. It had to, the walls were stone and the ceiling was stone, and right there in the middle of everything stood the weirdest looking thing I've ever seen. I've seen some weird things, I mean seriously, some of the Nobodies are just weeeeeird, but this thing was even weirder.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing at the… whatever it was that looked like it was made of orange and yellow and blue and red building blocks, with, oh, half a snow globe thrown in.

"That's a gummi ship," Lea said, still squinting slightly in the bright light. I huffed.

"That looks _nothing_ like a zeppelin," I said, frowning and crossing my arms. "They're way cooler."

Cid turned to give me an odd look.

"You've seen a zeppelin before, kid?" He asked, hands on his hips.

"Man, I built a zeppelin! With my own two hands!" I stuck my hands out in front of me. "Well, I mean, not by myself. There was like a huge group of us and we didn't have much time, so it wasn't that good looking or anything. It could fly though! Like, mostly, I guess…"

I started to remember, wood and canvas and all that rope and stuff, but then I stopped.

"Shit, I haven't heard anyone talk about zeppelins anywhere outside'a history books," Cid chuckled gruffly and grinned. "Where you from, kid?"

Oh. Uh… oh. Damn.

I could feel all their eyes on me. Awesome. Wonderful. I fidgeted a little and tried not to think and _the scream the scream the scream_ and I grinned a stupid grin.

"I-I don't remember," I shrugged and hoped he wouldn't push it. Don't push it.

Cid gave me an odd look, again, raised an eyebrow, and I thought I heard Lea start to take a breath, like he was going to talk, and he would, wouldn't he? Bastard.

"It's all right kid, shit, when ya've been around the worlds as much as ya have, everything can get a lil' muddled," Cid said. Was he being nice? Suspicious.

"Come on, I'll show ya how she works," Cid turned around and headed towards the ship. Lea gave me a look as he passed by, you know, a _look_. Like, _hide all you want but I'm gonna find out EVERYTHING anyway_ look. I shuddered and looked at Riku. He didn't seem fazed. By anything.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I said as we walked to the ship. He gave me an amused grin.

"With me? Nothing." He said. I frowned.

"You're always so cool and collected and stuff," I sighed, annoyed. His expression faltered for a moment.

"Just… trying not to think of some things," He said quietly, climbing onto the ship. Dammit. I suddenly remembered why _we_ were the ones running around the worlds and stuff. I climbed in behind him, and the hatch door closed.

"Sorry," I said, and he sighed.

"It's alright. If I think about it, I start getting mad, and if I'm mad I can't really think straight, so I just try not to think about it," He answered, and shrugged. "Not that I don't want to remember, it's just that I don't want to dwell on it."

I nodded. I could understand.

"All right, get yer asses up front and I'll show you how to fly this damn thing," Cid called out. I moved over with Riku to stand behind the guy at the front of the ship. There was the giant window thing and the huge dashboard… thing. Buttons, everywhere. Everywhere buttons. Big ones and little ones and even a big shiny red one.

"I don't think Demyx should be allowed near this," Lea said off-handedly. I glared at him.

"What happens if ya and the pretty boy over there get knocked out and the only one getting you three outta there is blondie?" Cid said gruffly. "Ya better listen good, I'm only saying this shit once…"

* * *

Gummi space was a freaky thing. I've heard about it and stuff but I'd never actually seen it. The sky at The World That Never Was was a lot like the sky when I was out at the ocean – dark and spotted with little white twinkling dots. Some bigger, some smaller. None of them huge geometric gummi blocks floating around other, round, spherical blobs of… something. It was freaky, to be honest.

More than that, though, it was boring.

BORING.

I twirled in the chair I was sitting in and watched the gaggingly bright colored walls go by. Whee. What a trip. I think I preferred swimming around as a turtle more. The walls were boring and spinning in the chair was boring and no one was talking and stupid Lea wouldn't let me near the front of the ship.

My spinning slowed to a stop with me facing Lea, who apparently had just gotten up to go… somewhere. I don't know. Ugh, stupid Lea. I grimaced in his direction and started spinning again.

"What the hell?"

Oh, that was new. I dragged my boot heel against the ground to bring myself to a stop facing him again. He looked kind of pissed. I tried to think about how long we'd been stuck in this ship all together but my perception of time was all wonky. Too long, probably.

"What?" I asked, crossing my arms and probably-maybe-sort of glaring at him. He sort of-maybe-kind of glared back.

"Why are you so freaking snarky to me?" Lea said, bristling. I could read that body language just fine.

I frowned and shrugged.

"Don't know what you're talking about," I answered, and shoved off with my heel to start spinning again, but Lea leaned forward and grabbed the chair.

"The first thing you say when you see me is that you hate me," Lea said lowly. What? What the hell was he bringing that up for? I frowned for a moment, then grinned brightly.

"So? Don't have a heart, remember," I said cheerfully, tapping my chest. "Can't hate."

For a while there it looked like Lea was going to chew through his own tongue. All of a sudden he shoved the chair spinning, hard. My heels skidded against the floor as I tried to slow down.

"Damn, what, does it bother you that freaking much?" I skidded to a stop and stood up to glare at him. Damn, forgot he had like five inches on me. Bastard.

"Yes!" He growled, glaring right back.

Huh. I glanced at Riku out of the corner of my eye, but he was looking very pointedly out the cockpit window. Well. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

"You and… what's his face… both gave me this weird look…" I said carefully, turning my eyes back to Lea. He was looking hella exasperated. "Like…"

"Like it was a fucking miracle we were seeing you again?" Lea spat. I started to reply, but he cut me off. "Maybe because it was."

"Why?" I frowned.

"Why? Because-" Lea started off again, but I interrupted him this time.

"Why do you care?" I said, shifting my stance. Lea sputtered a little, but I didn't let him get too far. "Not like we were friends or buddies or anything. I don't remember hanging out with you too much and definitely didn't hang out with Xaldin, I don't know who did, really…"

I chuckled, then gasped. Fake gasped.

"Oh, that's right, we did use to hang out." I said, grinning. "Used to. Past tense. Very, very past tense."

"Demyx…" Lea started, slow and like he wasn't trying to get angry. Fuck that.

"No, don't _Demyx_ me, Mr. "I'm gonna run off and do whatever the hell I want and let everything else fall apart". You no longer have the right to _Demyx_ me," I said, poking him in the chest. Hard.

"There were circumstances…" Lea started saying. I wasn't in a good mood to let people talk, apparently, because I cut him off again.

"I know exactly what those circumstances were," I hissed, poking him again. Funny, he didn't move away. "I don't give a crap about that. You could do whatever the hell you want, I don't care, but leaving and not telling anyone what the hell you're doing and just letting everything fall apart and not giving a crap about what we were supposed to do about it…"

I stopped myself. I didn't know what I was talking about anymore, I was just a lot more pissed than I thought I would be. He was giving me a weird look again, he looked like he was thinking real hard about something.

"You're mad because I didn't tell you," Lea said. I pushed him away from me and dropped back into the chair. "Demyx, if they found out what I was doing, if they caught up to me.."

"Shut up," I said, turning the chair around from him. I couldn't stand that look he was giving me. "I don't care, all right? So just shut up."

I looked at one of the stupid blocks in the wall. It was orange-yellow and it looked sort of like pineapple orange jello. Stupid, murky pineapple orange jello.

"You changed, you know…" Lea said. I didn't hear him because I'd sort of messed myself up already with what I'd said and I really didn't want to think about anything right then. That's the problem, right there, the thinking about it. Once you start thinking about it you can't stop and then you're thinking about other stuff that doesn't really matter, it really didn't matter. Honestly, so I wasn't too keen on the guy, not like I really hated him, I couldn't hate _anything_ really, I didn't have a heart.

I didn't have a heart, so I didn't have feelings. No feelings, so it didn't really matter what went on before and now and whatever, it didn't matter because it didn't affect me anyway. None of it affected me.

"It was yours."

Shit. What the hell was it about this whole thing that was making me just feel so messed up?

Seemed like I had interrupted Lea in saying… something. I don't know. I wasn't paying attention.

"What?" He asked, confused. You're not the only confused one buddy.

"Saix was supposed to give the mission to you but you weren't there so I said I'd take it myself," I muttered. I should just shut up myself but I couldn't.

"Why?" Lea asked. His voice was all quiet and he looked too serious. Stop looking so serious, it looks bad on you Axel.

"I don't know, it's not like you were ever there, and… and it's not like he liked me or anything, I don't know. I don't…" I wrapped my arms around myself. "It just wasn't the same. Everyone was going, everyone was gone, there wasn't anyone there anymore, it was so empty… Stupid…"

"Demyx, what mission was it?" Lea asked, and I thought I could hear him stepping closer. I frowned, I was feeling swirly. Dirty. Murky and mugged up.

"What?" I asked, I looked at him and I looked at Riku and I couldn't find an answer anywhere, but what was the question that needed an answer?

"What mission was it? That you took?" Lea asked, and he was looking even more serious than he was. I shuddered and I realized I was gripping my arm too tight. Too tight. I was losing a bit of focus and then I was losing more. I pulled my arms away from myself and grabbed at the water bag.

"I'm gonna take a break, I'm just reaaally tired," I said quickly, sending myself down that trickle of water through the cork.

"Demyx, wait…"

I didn't.

I barely made it into the bottle. Everything was so dark but I didn't have eyes to see with so I don't know what that was all about. It was dark, and cold, and I had too many memories all crowding around and I didn't even have a heart to keep them all in.


End file.
